Minerva Transmits Witchcraft
by Capella of the Midlight Pale
Summary: -Discontinued-.  Mion Sonozaki - a girl across worlds innumerable.  Snapshots and stories of triumph and despair, love and friendship.
1. trampled by the crowd of wheels

**MINERVA TRANSMITS WITCHCRAFT**

**Disclaimer/Notes**: _Higurashi_ in its various incarnations is the property of 07th Expansion. The author claims no challenge to this ownership, as this work is of amateur and recreational non-profit design. So here's my attempt at doing several things; primarily celebrating the wonderful and maddeningly complex characters and universe of _Higurashi _that I have come to cherish. Second, it is also my attempt to branch out and try new things as a fic author. The following is an ongoing series of self-contained short stories, spread across the many -hen worlds already established, as well as those that have been only hinted at. So yeah. Hopefully it turns out okay. :)

* * *

**trampled by the crowd of wheels**

For what felt to have been the hundredth time since he'd set foot in her room twenty minutes ago, Keiichi sighed. Reveling in her defeat only had any meaning when she stood a chance in the first place.

He gestured vaguely to the top of her worksheet as he leaned over the table. "Alright alright. It's not really that difficult to grasp. You just need to look at the basic structure."

Mion bit her lip, eyeing the weird sequence of numbers across the page. "'Looking' isn't the issue here. I can _see_ just fine."

"Fair enough," Keiichi allowed. He sat back and paused. "Take two then." He cleared his throat theatrically, pooling as much condescension into his voice as he could before speaking again. "So if we apply Ptolemy's theorem to the cyclic quadrilateral ABCD defined by four successive vertices's of the pentagon -"

"And you lost me again."

"Don't you think it's pretty unreasonable to ask me for help if all you're going to do is give up before I can even make it through a sentence?"

Mion shrugged, tapping the eraser of her pencil against the table. "Well, I figured you'd have some neat way of phrasing it that would make it sound, you know, sane. Not some mutant sea-creature speak."

"Funny how the rest of the world seems to understand it just fine."

Leaning back in her chair, Mion draped herself in indifference. "All this means is that you've failed miserably, and I should remember this for the next time I think to ask you for assistance."

He blinked at that logic. "So. . . you can't grasp simple trig, and _I'm_ the one who failed?"

"Spot on, spot on."

Stray seconds elapsed, a quiet marching of soldiers, Keiichi then throwing his hands up in surrender. ". . . Alright, I'm going home."

Mion laughed at him playfully, waving her hand. "Okay okay, sorry. Please. I won't be such a pill. Can we try again?"

"I guess," he relented. He spent a moment ruminating on how to make the dull task of pouring over the exact same homework he'd done a few hours previous again even remotely interesting. The answer that came to him was simple and acceptable: don't. "How about you try another problem, and tell me where you get stuck. It's kind of tough to do this blindfold tutoring thing."

"Okay."

As Mion returned to silence, brow furrowing in concentration as she tried to decipher the torturous glyphs and runes that symbolized the horrors of pseudo-advanced mathematics, Keiichi rose to explore. He had never before been invited into Mion's home, let alone her room, and the opportunity to rummage was much too interesting to pass up. Wealth seemed to leap from the walls - lacquered shelves housing drafts and documents he knew she received from the burden of inheritance; archaic scroll paintings lilting down in soft mists of color; books of stylistic design, bound by well-manicured covers, kept in spectacular form by patience and care. This was the room of a girl who was vast and alive - reaching out, touching the world, pulling back as much as she gave away.

And manga. A whole lot of manga.

Mion watched him from the tips of her view. "Please, by all means, look around my room. It's not like I'm right here and can't see you inspecting my belongings while I didn't give you permission."

Completely ignoring her objection, Keiichi came to stand in front of several shelves of graphic novels. "Wow, you really do have a lot of this stuff." He ran his fingers over the titles he recognized or seemed interesting. "Have you actually read all of these?"

"Yeah," she shrugged.

An eye-patched rogue peered back at him from dozens of faces. "You're a big Leiji Matsumoto fan, I see."

Mion nodded. "Emeraldas is awesome."

Keiichi found himself grinning. "I am Keiichi's total lack of surprise." The quiet cadence of a turned magazine page shifted his attention to the right, and he immediately found himself encapsulated by the clumpy haze of dazzling orange staring back at him. "Huh." Cautiously, as if one false move would melt his hands down to plaster, he lifted the object from its perch on the shelf and turned to Mion at the table with it outstretched in his uncertain hands. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but - Mion, what is. . . this?"

"Hm?" she murmured, turning to face him. "What is - oh."

"Yeah," he replied awkwardly.

Her pencil clacked softly against the roll of papers before her, and she sighed. ". . . Okay. You're going to laugh at this."

"Hopefully."

She swallowed nervously. "Anyway, it's - it's a plush."

"Uh huh. I can see _that_," he replied, lightly shaking the stuffed tiger in his hands in plain emphasis. "I was wondering about the additional information that goes along with that obvious fact. Y'know, like, why you have it in your room."

Mion's mouth was already exhausted and dry from mounting embarassment. Of _course_ she'd just leave it there for him to find. "It's from one of those Disney movies, okay? It's from like eight or nine years ago. I thought it was cute at the time, so my Dad saw it a little while later and picked it up for me. Alright?"

Keiichi flipped the plush over to look at its bottom, finding a white badge fastened to its laundering information, and Mion's face suddenly went ashen in realization. "That's funny," Keiichi remarked casually, unable to suppress the fiendish light shimmering in his amused eyes, "because there's a price-tag on the bottom here. It's from the store your Uncle runs. And it says 'received 03/83', which was like three months ago."

Unrestrained and cornered, Mion threw her pencil onto her workbook in bitter resignation. "FINE! I bought it a few weeks ago because I just saw that movie and thought it was- was- SHUT UP! So put him back, okay? Your hands are filthy anyway. Look, I don't want you getting him all dirtied up! It isn't easy to clean moron germs off of cute things!"

"Pffsh -"

By then it was far too late. The words had been said, the contract signed, the transference complete. The sweltering jungle about Mion's thoughts descended upon her in a primordial rush. She knew what was next.

"Oh my God," she whispered, somehow trying to rewind time. "Kei-chan- uh, um, hey- look, don't start -"

Right on cue, Keiichi burst into mocking giggles.

Mion sighed mid-sentence. "- laughing. . ."

The tiger dropped to the floor as Keiichi chortled at her misfortune of having a very guilty pleasure exposed. Across the room, another magazine page flipped. Keiichi pressed his hands to his eyes to wipe at the moisture building from his hysterics.

"Oh, Mion- your _face_. . ."

Fingers congealed into fists. "Oh, think that's so funny, do we Kei-chan? Huh? My embarrassment is _that_ amusing to you, is it? Well laugh it up, jackass!"

"Okay!" he agreed readily, laughing further.

Oh, it was _on_.

"You- you stupid -" Years of honed instinct and calculating design throttled her faltered engines, devices of attack howling into swift, violent life. Eyes warped into feral mirrors. Her hands slammed down on the table, standing suddenly, chair pushed back from straightening knees. "Fine! So this is how it goes? So be it! I hereby invoke my authority as Club High Commander to warrant an immediate challenge between myself and this smarmy hyena that demands absolute solemnity where no single participant can laugh - and doing so results in immediate disqualification! The hammer falls as soon as I'm done speaking this sentence, so three-two-one GO!"

Keiichi was cognizant enough to understand what had just been engaged, but was carried too far along by inertia to halt its mechanisms. "Ha ha haaaa. . . No, wait!"

A magazine page turned.

Emulating Satoko in pure, unfiltered jubilation, Mion found herself cackling at the reversal of fortune. "Ho ho ho! Kei-chan has been defeated in honorable combat! What a shame, looks like you lose yet again."

Suddenly Keiichi didn't think the situation was so hilarious anymore. "What the hell? What kind of contest was that?"

Mion stalked around the table casually. "Too late to backpedal at this stage. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we move on to the much anticipated Punishment Round. . ."

"Whoa, red light! That was entirely unfair!"

Mion stood before him, hands resting on her hips, malevolently drinking in the terror spiraling between the two of them. "Oh I don't think so! You can dance around it all you want, but I have regulations and procedure on my side, chump. The laws of the universe have you bound to defeat at my hands yet again."

Keiichi scoffed, waving his hand in dismissal. "As if. Pull your head out. The rules of the universe clearly state that all duels of honor must be made in advance and with plenty of time for me to prepare myself so I can find a way around your rampant cheating!"

Mion could not care less about his arguments. She found her eyes roaming to the other side of the room where her closet rested - beckoning out to her with devices of frilly and lush despair. "Let's see. . . swans? No, we did that like two days ago. The floral mu-mu needs to be washed, so that's out. I think I still have the fur-lined purse around here. . . I don't know if you'd be able to fit into the gorilla panties, though. But that might make things all the more interesting. Hm, but I don't want you to _rip_ them or something. . ."

"Tune back in over here, Mion! I'm not done making my case! I - Wait, gorilla _panties_?"

Her gaze whirled back to him again, brutish grin of sadism masking her features. "Step into my torture chamber, Kei-chan. I have evils prepared for you that you can't even fathom. . ."

"Okay screw this. You didn't even give me a chance. We're doing this again for real."

"Nope! That's a Forfeit!"

"My ass! It's a Do-Over!"

Mion frowned angrily. "Forfeit!"

Keiichi returned her glare. "Do-Over!"

"Forfeit!"

"Do-Over!"

"Forfeit!"

"Do-Over!"

"FORFEIT!"

"DO-OVER!"

The tide of battle subsided briefly, rolling on through the cloudless evening. A martial impasse as two monoliths hovered in rigid yet meteoric opposition, iron walls standing fast against the silence of time. Neither gave one inch. Light crept out from the shadowy netherworld, spurned back to the darkness by their merciless, uncompromising towers. Until Keiichi sneezed.

". . . FORFEIT!"

"DO-OVER!"

On the other side of the room, lounging atop Mion's bed, Shion flipped another page of the magazine she had been reading. She paused briefly to look at the two of them over the lid of the page. She sighed.

"Okay. You two? Dumb as hell."

Her attention seemingly returned to article she had been skimming. She bit down the urge to laugh before speaking again.

"And Kei-chan, that was clearly a forfeit."


	2. europa

_Note: Profuse apologies and gestures of artistic respect to Rosetta._

**europa - set sail our souls, your oceans of ice**

Akane Sakashita, formerly Miyo Takano, formerly Miyoko Tanashi, was pulled from a shallow dream by the sound of satchels scraping against concrete. A clouded orange sky pried at her eyes, clean wind sweeping across her face, seasons in the stars receding to the edges of a waking mind. The sky moved sideways. She blinked once, slowly, realizing that it was her in fact that was moving. Her chin lulled down against her collarbone, evacuated strength beyond the grasp of nerves, and she was met with the sight of a long stretch of pavement running from the end of her feet into darkening trees in the gloomy horizon.

She was being dragged.

Fear slammed into her still-drowsy thoughts. She couldn't feel anything below her neck. The scraping satchel was in fact her own body, pulled roughly in a pitiless line across the grey. Gashes and tears landing unfelt and unseen.

She could vaguely feel a hand behind her neck, clutching the collar of her blouse. "Uhm- I. . ."

"It's okay," a voice - so old, so familiar, so _wrong_ - informed her from above and behind. "Don't try to talk. Save your strength."

Miyo swallowed heavily, trying futilely to turn and look up. "Who. . . ?"

"You'll remember soon enough." Her mystery warden continued walking along at a steady pace, Miyo's body moving forward in tiny surges of noise. The voice that was known but unknown spoke again from behind. "I do have to apologize for the cut to your forehead. That was not my intention. I'm sorry. Things were- well, we were in a bit of a hurry, so I couldn't really stop. I took a look over it a few minutes ago. It wasn't that deep. Does it sting. . . ?"

Miyo blinked, suddenly forced to give the sensation a moment's thought. "Mm. . . Yes. I think -"

"Don't worry about it," the woman assured her in a calm voice. As if she were a patient or close friend, and not a drugged and helpless victim to her strong and insistent hands. "I sterilized the cut with isopropyl, so that's what that is. If we had a bit more time, I would have given you a proper bandage cover. But we were- you know. Like I said, we were pressed for time. I tried to leave all things detached from this neutral, so for that, I am truly sorry."

Miyo blinked tears from her eyes. "Where - "

"I told you not to speak. You will understand shortly."

Miyo complied. She was in no position not to. Instead she summoned mental fortitude honed through years of pain and neglect to overwhelm the dazing fear and begin to rouse means to understand the situation. A brief look about her baffled field of vision was all that was necessary to know exactly where she was. She should have known the instant she had gazed down the poured field of slated earth when she opened her eyes.

Hinamizawa. At least, what was left of it.

She had never returned before. Never had seen the need. That chapter of existence had been closed. There was no history, because there was no town. There was nothing.

The woman's voice, hidden in in the silvery fog of time and place, suddenly became known to her - memories reaching through the gnarled space, pulling images from decades ago, returning to find the child that Miyo forgot. Realization brought about a new kind of terror. One that needed no physical shape to paralyze, no bars to restrain. Pounding veins in her brain, insanity wheezing out from its salivating maw.

"Here we are."

Miyo was suddenly pulled up and thrown into a chair. It must have been quite a sight. A lone chair sitting in the middle of a valley of concrete. An island atop a faceless, entombed universe.

"I know it is going to be hard for you to talk right now. I saw to that. So don't burden yourself. I will talk enough for both of us. I promise that you will fully understand before we are done."

Wavering in the chair, hands firm on her shoulders, Miyo steadied her rolling neck to watch as the woman walked around to look directly into her eyes.

". . . Sh- . . . Mion?"

Mion's hand flew savagely forward, raking across the older woman's face, thin furrows opened by trailing fingernails. "I apologized for the wound you did not deserve. And now is the time where you will receive what you do deserve. For that, and whatever else you spurn upon me, I will _not_. So sit there, be silent, and prepare yourself."

One hand resting against Miyo's shoulder, the taller and now much older Mion Sonozaki unslung a large bag from her back and allowed it to slam against the ground. Crinkling metals shifted in its bulky shape. Briefly kicking the knot open with her foot, the contents spilled outward slightly, revealing the links of a mass of silver chains. Miyo's heart began to seal with the winter of impending reality.

Mion's right hand shifted from Miyo's shoulder to her chest so she could bend down to pull the chains from the bag without letting go of the captured woman and causing her to fall over. As she did, she began speaking conversationally. "You will find yourself mostly numb. The reason why I am binding you now is because, in a few hours, sensation will return to your body. You have been anesthetized by a sedative that inhibits nicotinic acetylcholine receptor activity. I am sure, as a certified nurse, you are aware of what that means?" A large circular clasp was removed from the bag first, and Mion set about closing the device around Miyo's ankles and the legs of the chair. "Ahh - but then, that would be my mistake, right? You actually didn't hold any kind of legitimate medical certification. That was all just a front. You were quite an actress."

The voice of a child was gone. A hollow, beaten woman was all that remained. Miyo was surprised that she would have even thought otherwise.

Mion, forty-two, stood suddenly, eyes alight with a kind of playful mischief that must have died and could not possibly exist, and yet there it was. "Surprised, Takano-san? I hope so. I really, really hope so. And I'm not even getting started. I know everything about your entire life. I have spent the last twenty-six years living inside of your footprints." Mion's calloused, yellowed fingers reached out almost affectionately, lightly straightening the collar of Miyo's pink blouse. "'But I'm not with them anymore!', is what you want to say, right? Yeah, I know. I know all about it. Unfortunately for you, though, I couldn't care less. You've spent pretty much your entire adult life surrounded by people with political agendas, and now I'm here to tell you that it meant nothing. Absolutely _nothing_. Because I don't give a damn about anything other than this, right now."

Mion moved again to Miyo's rear, out of the woman's sight. Miyo could distantly feel her arms being pulled back, could hear the soft metal whisper of bindings wrapping around her wrists, interlinked mechanisms slowly unraveling like falling steel drapery. Mion threaded a length of chain fastened to Mion's wrists to an iron rung afitted to the metal platform the chair sat upon.

Miyo tried to breathe around a lung of anxiety. "How do you - how _could_ you -"

"I told you. I know everything about you. Even the mundane crap." Mion stood and walked back around to stare the woman down, touch and presence no longer required. Her eyes weren't novas of fury or seeking coils of hate, they were merely tired with the grief of age. "I know what cafe you frequent, what latte you order, what the sensitive data files of the birth certificates of the people who work there and recognize your face look like. I know what type of gas you put in your hybrid. I know the addresses of the women who cut your hair. I know the number of the parking spaces given to the employees of the store where you buy your _shoes_. I know the schools of the children of the men and women you carouse pretentious art-house cinema with on the third Monday of every month."

Mion leaned in, emerald hair sunken as blood in the setting sun. "Do you understand now? You might have spent a long time trying to revive and justify your adoptive grandfather's research, but I. . . I have spent the last two and a half decades calculating a way to force you to repent for what you did on the night of June 19th, 1983. Scared? Jesus, I hope so. I hope you feel at least half of what everyone felt before- before you -"

She broke off. She put her hands on her hips, smiling at the shackled prisoner. "Well. I'll be back. There's still time."

Mion left. Time elapsed.

At first Miyo couldn't understand the act. What was the point of dragging her out here only to take off? But as minutes crawled by into hours, the answer became painfully acute. Slowly feeling returned, anesthetics subsiding into distant physical memories, and everything began to settle in. Grinding away at her shoulders and legs were the fiery gashes that had been stripped across her body as she had been unceremoniously dragged across the concrete. The biting folds of the metal restraints into her aging joints.

The gathering horror of what it all meant.

Eventually the sun vanished, all feeling returned, and there was merely a dark, ceaseless canopy. A horizon of trees, a night on a platform holding back souls of the lost. Miyo eventually began throttling her restraints, chains cutting into brittle flesh, bones denying her access to freedom. She began to scream hysterically, manic in her desire to flee the inevitable return, pleading to any being of any realm to give her just one chance. She had regretted everything - _always_ regretted everything - but there never had been anyone to apologize to, or explain, or plead, or kneel, or. . .

But now. . .

Footsteps approached softly from behind. "So I guess no one came, huh? No surprise there. I wasn't going to wait all this time just to lose this opportunity. Even in the years after your expulsion, you were always being watched. . . it took a very long time for them to stop caring about you. But I'm a patient woman. Tonight, it's just the two of us."

Salvation was lost. The door of hours had slammed closed. The two of them were once again alone, and, Miyo knew, it would be for the final time.

Miyo's shoulders deflated. ". . . I suppose I shouldn't deign to ask _why_ you're doing this."

"A wasted question," Mion agreed.

Tilting her head back, Miyo looked up into the moonless black. "So. . . I want to know, how?"

A soft laugh came from the dark. "Really? After everything I told you earlier? I knew everything about your daily routine. I just had to find an opportune time and -"

"No, I mean - how are you _alive_?"

She could practically hear the grin in Mion's voice. "Because Oyashiro-sama saved me, of course!"

Miyo sighed bitterly. This was obviously an extension of the madness. The answer was hardly surprising. ". . . I see."

"Bzz. Kidding. Actually, I can answer that with a question of my own: in concentration camps, people that survived the gas chambers were quite rare, but of those that did, almost all of them were children. Do you know why that is?"

Miyo shook her head. "Just tell me."

"Because when a large mass of people clump together and collapse, those driven down to the bottom often get caught within miniature pockets of untouched air from the compressed organic mass. And being the smallest, children generally were found at the bottom of the pile. Guess you didn't think of that when you were having us all gassed, huh?"

Miyo blinked. Of all the thought she had given to that night, such a thing had never occured to her. ". . . I had nothing to do with the method. But still, I never considered -"

Mion laughed at the surprised reaction. "Kidding again. Are you stupid? There was like twenty kids in the school, and I was the _biggest_. Air pockets? Man, you're as gullible as Kei-chan. I ran off. The pursuing unit lost track of me. I threw some of my clothes and shoes into the mountain river and ran off in the other direction. Guess they didn't think to tell you that one got away, huh?"

"If you already know what happened, why are you telling me this?"

"So it will hurt. I want to impose that. I know how command of the project was violently wrested away from you as your political benefactors withdrew all support and funding. I know how you spent the next few years trapped in the reality of having a fake life, and unable to pursue any legitimate contact due to your staged death. I know - and this is my favorite part - how much _shit_ you felt like when you realized how near-sighted and shallow your goals had been in the broad sense. You lived to see what you wanted. Then you had to live for nothing else."

Miyo swallowed, tears undeserved pressing into her pale eyes. "And now you're doing the same thing, Mion?"

"_I'm _not stupid. I have no interest in walking away from this." Footsteps scratched behind the chair, accompanied by a dull fluid noise. A second later there was a twisting motion, plastic spinning atop a lidded screw. Miyo gasped and hissed as she was struck with a viscous stream of liquid from behind, pouring down over her hair and face, running over her lips and onto her clothes, seeping down in a cool and wet rush. Miyo nearly vomited from the taste, knowing immediately what it was.

Mion lowered the jerry can of gasoline and spoke cheerfully. "Since this was how you supposedly 'died' that night, I figure this method made the most sense. Like that? I syphoned it from your hybrid." Another pleasant, casual laugh echoed about. "No, not _orally_. We're ladies, right? We gotta have some dignity. But no. I did that to capture you, but then I thought how awesome it would be to use it for this - the poetic irony is pretty great, huh?"

Miyo had screwed her eyes closed the moment the gas touched her. Even still, when she heard the fuel being poured once again and not feeling its putrid caress, she knew perfectly well what Mion was doing. And that was the moment that any kind of hope was utterly snuffed out - madness had found its way back into her life, marshaled all its elements into chaos, thrown her mercilessly to the sea. All men cast adrift drown. She was no different.

There was nothing other than the hollow drips of two soaked women. Starlight, wind, waves, souls.

". . . _Sigh," _Mion said. She threw the empty can aside, its empty bounces taking it forever into the dark. "I used to be a looker, you know. I was supposed to be beautiful and loved."

"I'm sorry. . ."

"No you're not."

Miyo shook her head, pleading to herself to keep her eyes closed until the end. "There's nothing I can- I'm sorry. . . There isn't anything I can say."

"You're right. There isn't." Strong hands fell onto Miyo's shoulders, Mion's arms circling around the older woman in a gentle embrace. Mion leaned in closer, her lips resting next to Miyo's ear. "With this, I'll forgive you. They've been waiting for me for twenty-six years, under this lake of stone. I'm going home tonight. It's. . . been much too long. I can't wait to see them again."

Miyo sobbed in a sudden rush of despair. "Don't - _Please,_ don't -"

Mion's hand fell to her pocket, retrieving a lighter. "It's a beautiful night, Takano-san."

And how could she have come to this? What funnel of circumstances could possibly have twisted her through such a meticulous craft? That the end was impossible was not a blessing, but a curse - a final mockery, a triumph of insanity over order, a sanctuary of fools screaming in the dark. This was not Hinamizawa Madness, born of parasite, latched to flesh, wrecked to erasure. There was simply no capacity. The flint and the wheel kissed, flowers and lights opening the curtains, and Miyo saw the truth for all that it was.

This wasn't a disease. This was vengeance.

_Take me out of your thoughts, I am home to the sky. A constellation of stars where I can script my own peace._

Mion's breath stopped. The night went silent. Miyo's eyes, ruined and ashamed, flew open and the orphanage stood looming in front of them. Children and worlds, failures and temptations, piracy of youth and frenzied smearing of color. Oh, how sorry I am, I meant not to move you this way - here our actions are our own, here we can choose, and here we are we. Is this not the house of many mansions? See now the light, its soft and growing fire, and how it touches the walls?

Miyoko Tanashi, eventually Miyo Takano, eventually Akane Sakashita, reached out with small, childish hands - clutching the offered brush, smiling at the friends at her side, looking then at the brightest walls that ached for design and splendor. She rested the brush in the pool of flames, tiny dancing lights that spoiled the dark, and lifted the sinewy needles to the surface of the infinite -

Painting the night glowing and gold, painting the two of them out, a new sun upon a stone sea in.


	3. the will to harm

**the will to harm**

Mion watched through a kind of disconnected haze as the halogen lights spun about, blues and reds firing brief sweeping beams through the dark. Her hands had, for the most part, stopped shaking. The wiry coils of her muscles were slowly beginning to unfasten, blood knots unraveling into exhausted ropes. She let out a soft breath. It was over. The nightmare was everlasting, but this particular shift in the dream had finally relinquished its hold. _(The retraction of pain is euphoria.)_ From the open trunk of the station wagon that served as a makeshift ambulance, she watched with shaky ease as children skirted through the turning colors to latch onto the arms of their teary-eyed parents.

She almost smiled. Would have, at least, had there not been a needle jamming into her skin.

"Ow. Ow ow ow -"

The elderly paramedic dabbed softly at the large gash on Mion's forehead with a cotton swab, frowning for what was certainly not the first time. "Please hold still, Sonozaki-san."

"Right," Mion agreed, stopping herself from nodding. "Sorry. I won't- ow ow **ouch**-" Fifth stitch. Where was her bravado now, when she needed it most? It wasn't as if the thread work slamming its way through her nerves in a cold slither was _that_painful - it was merely multiplied by the sheer angering embarrassment of being observed by _him_ of all people. Deliberately refusing to look up at the tall observer to her left, she bluntly spoke out to him instead. "Is it over?"

"Oh, this?" Ooishi answered, leaning on the open trunk door. "Yeah, mostly."

Mion rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Captain Vague."

Ooishi grinned, hands fumbling through his pockets for a match to light the cigarette dangling between his lips. "We saved your life, you know. You could at least show a little bit of gratitude."

"Kei-chan and Satoko-chan saved our lives," Mion told him icily. Another throb of the needle caused her fingers to coil in her lap. "You stood around being fat and annoying at the open door of a car with air conditioning."

"Ah, the bitter flower of Sonozaki zeal. I surely will never be tire of its fragrance, hm?"

Another gentle dabbing above her eyebrow touched away a loose droplet of blood. Her eyes flashed maroon in the spiral of color, and not entirely from the lights. Of all the people that she could want to be standing at her side at that very moment, Ooishi had to be in the absolute basement of the list. Where was Keiichi? And how could she ever summon the strength to look Rena in the eyes and tell her that Mion had failed her? That somewhere along the way, Rena had stumbled, cast plunging through an intangible mire, and Mion had not been enough to pull her back onto her feet?

Ooishi wouldn't understand. And Mion did not want him to.

Mion still refused to look up at him. "Go away."

He shrugged, striking the match against the handle of the open trunk. "You think you can shrug this off?" he asked her seriously, mumbling silver around the lit cigarette. "All it takes is one child, one parent to say otherwise. . . Suddenly you won't find me _asking_ for anything."

Mion scoffed sourly. "Don't get so ambitious now- ow ow ow!"

"Sorry," the paramedic told her, even though the fault was not his yet again. "Almost done."

"We're sick of it, Ooishi-san. So very sick of you and your conspiracy theories."

Ooishi laughed aloud, silhouette strobing blue and red. "Not much of a conspiracy here though, eh? I thought we might be able to have a friendly chat."

Mion finally looked up at him, her face blank of the searing emotion she was consumed within. "Look. It's been a rough night. I haven't been able to see my friends yet after watching them try to kill each other. So please don't take offense or anything, but kindly _fuck off_ for a while, okay?"

Even the paramedic had to sigh at that. Mion just didn't care. If they - anyone, everyone - were going to impede her this way, then all of humanity itself was nothing more than a featureless obstacle to be navigated or removed. The night had howled its challenge at them all. Did they honestly expect her to refrain from standing fast against it?

Ooishi let out an annoyed breath. "You youngsters. Fair enough. You're not on trial here. I'll be seeing you later then. Hope you feel better."

"Thank you for your concern," she replied acidly, watching him turn and walk over to another car where several of the firefighting crew had gathered. The wind sifted down through the valley, and Mion suddenly felt displaced; moved by some transforming barrier, cutting her off from the world lying right in front of her. Trees sang about among the voices. Someone had been left behind, and Mion was no longer certain whom. Rena's hand might have been at her back all along. Reaching out, closing, finding nothing but air.

She hissed slightly, brought back to reality by the moving needle.

The paramedic spoke quietly. ". . . Was that wise?"

Mion swallowed, trying very hard not to be frustrated. "Probably not. But no one did anything wrong. I'm tired of that man. Tired of his meddling and his crusade. I don't -" She broke off, blinking, as the gap between the worlds was suddenly bridged. She shot to her feet, oblivious to the sudden tracery of blood that drew across her face from the action. "Kei-chan!"

Keiichi looked over at her, a watchtower against the crashing surf of lights, smiling. "Hey you."

Doing what he could to not place his face in his hands, the paramedic grunted quietly. "Sonozaki-san, your stitches. . ."

Mion stormed forward in a rush. A lot of things whirled about her mind then, photographs of memory haloing the mind's eye - but most particularly was the feeling of his arms about her, his unreasonable and unfathomable despair, his plead to understand his feelings about how he had punctured the womb of trust she spun about him. Then, she had been shocked and hammered into a daze by the reality of his pleading, wordless affection. And now. . . Now, there was no sanity, only need; a pitiful and unceasing push to touch him.

He was stopped abruptly as Mion threw her arms around him, holding him as tight as she could, reaffirming that she still lived in a world where he was alive and they were together as friends. It did not feel strange or alien, but instead necessary, a beating heart suddenly spasming to a pulsing life after agonizing minutes of stillness.

"You're okay. . . You're really okay. . . !"

Keiichi smiled awkwardly, hands reaching up to touch gently at her shoulders. "Uh- Eh heh- Yeah. So I am."

Time and place returned as quickly as they had departed, and Mion realized what she was doing and propelled herself back and away from him. Though it was utterly impossible for her to smother the relief flooding her gaze as she looked at his face. "S-Sorry, it's just - I saw you on the roof with Rena, and. . . I don't know. Even. . . I thought you might never be coming back." She stumbled backwards a few feet before gently sitting back down over the rear bumper. She let out a breath, smiling. "I'm glad you're okay."

He looked to be in almost as much disbelief about that fact as she was. "Almost wasn't. How about _you_? Miss Eyebrow-Zipper. How many are they putting into you?"

Waiting for Mion to regain her stability, the older man snorted in good humor. "Oh probably a few hundred at this rate, if Sonozaki-san refuses to sit still."

Mion flushed in sudden embarrassment. "Hah. . . Yeah. Just a little scratch."

"She's really sorry," Keiichi said, the words stumbling out suddenly and unrehearsed. "I hope you know that."

Mion needed no clarification about whom Keiichi was speaking. "I know. It's alright. I'm just. . . happy you two are okay."

He laughed, a nervous and bewildered noise, as he sauntered over to the car and sat down beside her. He looked as if he had been crying.

_Of course he had._

He watched the same fracas of movement she had been watching as he said, "You're really something, you know that?"

"Huh?"

"Just like that, you drop it. I didn't even need to explain or anything. You just trust her implicitly, even after what just happened. It's amazing."

"Yeah well. That wasn't her. I don't- can't even imagine how it must have been. I'd gladly bear this mark if it meant pulling her back from wherever it was that'd she'd fallen- OW! _Damn_ it old man!"

"All done," the paramedic informed her, his fingers and the tweezers contained within pulling back from her face. He once again used the reddened swab to brush against the wound before placing the object in a plastic bag and standing up.

Mion smiled up at him in appreciation. ". . . Thanks. Sorry for all the name calling."

He laughed at that. "I've heard worse. Be sure to check in with Irie-sensei tomorrow so you can get it properly examined."

She nodded wordlessly as he gathered his tools and left the two of them alone. Again the feeling of detachment descended upon her. She could still feel Keiichi next to her, the heat of his proximity and the edge of his leg against hers, but all the moving lights and lives were shifted behind some screen that was like watching rain gather in the sky. Sleeping, awake, dreaming, becalmed.

Keiichi shook his head. "And then you go and do something like that."

"Say what?"

"I _just _told you how great it was how you have this unwavering faith in your friends, and then I hear you've been badmouthing some poor old guy to his face just because he was trying to help you. Same old Mion."

Mion looked over at him in a flash, eyes shining malevolently beneath the blue. "Am I going to have to hit you, Kei-chan? Do we have a problem?"

Keiichi let out a strangled laugh as he changed the subject. ". . . So what's going to happen to Rena?"

"I don't know. After everything that's happened, it isn't just us who decides what can be done anymore. Those two that we moved. . . then, it was just the five of us. We could keep that amongst ourselves. Now, though. . ."

"Can't you. . . I dunno. Do something? You've got some pretty persuasive voices in your corner. Is there a way to smooth this over?"

Mion shrugged, looking at all the distant faces, trying and failing to find Rena among them. "I'll try. Believe me, I'm going to try. And I think I can convince most. But I don't know if that will be enough."

Keiichi's hands came together in tightened fists. "Then I'll just have to convince the rest."

She looked over, and began to wag her finger at him in a patronizing gesture. "No baseball bats for you, young man. I hereby revoke your blunt weapon privileges for the next six months."

"Dullard," he complained. They both laughed. It was a hollow and brief gesture, alleviating nothing.

"I really hope that we can. . . go back to the way things were," Mion said quietly, her head tilting to the side to rest against the window of the car. She closed her eyes, the sleep of days churning behind her eyes, aching to be lifted into the world. "You were the best thing to happen to us in a long time, did you know that? Satoshi-kun left this huge hole, and - I don't know. I can't tell you how it is. You didn't _fill_ it, but, you made us all forget about the pain of it being there. That's pretty. . . important to us. You managed to enhance our lives without ever replacing the person we lost. Everyone really appreciates that."

He swallowed. "Thanks. I really - thanks. . ."

Shyly, eyes still closed, Mion's hand moved atop his and gently rested upon it; a soft curtain of warmth lilting onto a shaking and frayed foundation. He hesitated for a moment at the surprise contact before turning his hand over, its rough and calloused shape fixed to her elegant splendor in perfect form, their fingers lightly intertwining.

Mion's eyes eventually opened again, moving to look at him beside her. "Did you really mean what you said before? About. . ."

"Yeah. I don't really know how to explain it. It was like a dream, but wasn't. Some other me, or maybe just. . . myself, in some distant past. I somehow lost faith in you and Rena. There weren't any details I can actually hold on to, but I guess that's why- why I couldn't leave it alone. I saw myself in Rena's position, and knew - _knew_ I had to save her. Like I was somehow saving myself in the process. I'd have done anything to erase that world where I stopped trusting you."

". . . You're really weird sometimes, Kei-chan."

He scoffed. "You're the heir apparent to the most influential family of a village that celebrates the memory of a god of death and disease by throwing cotton into a river once a year. Countered? I think so. We're done here."

"Ass," she muttered, shaking her head. She couldn't help but smile anyway. "I seem to remember a certain someone running around like a puppy at the Watanagashi. Are you a selective fool, or just completely stupid?"

His eyes flashed in that way they always did when he sensed a challenge between them. "If my heart wasn't trying to rip itself from my chest right now, I'd have to ask you to step outside for that, Mion."

The reality of what aftermath they were drifting upon fell back upon her, the permanent image of him standing against Rena as a razor-edge cleaver scythed through the night at his body burning back upon her thoughts. Her hand tightened in his again, reaffirming time after time that he was really here, and that they all had survived to live through the consequences.

"Are you really okay?" she asked him again, her voice small and fragile, saved just for him.

He blinked at her. "Yeah. Um, you know. Adrenaline. I can't even remember what just happened. It's like I slept through it all, in a way."

Mion nodded, closing her eyes again, head resting against the window once more. "Yeah. I - Yeah. . ."

"She was just really scared," he told her. His fingers shook in hers. "Terrified that we'd abandon her. So she thought the only way to live through it was to abandon us first. But she couldn't. It was just too much. I wish I was strong like that."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"Fine. You're not. You suck."

"Yep!"

Minutes stretched out in the gathering silence. Monochrome floes floating over the sinking despair, ice that had formed across their hearts through the day now melting into the night. Mion loathed how it always seemed that something terrible was irrevocably required to bring people closer together like this. How many months - years - might have gone by? Was it okay to hope that everything could correct itself while she held onto this moment too?

He let out a tired breath. "Well. . . I'm glad you're okay, at least. I should talk to my parents. Who knows what rumors they've heard by now."

"Can we just stay like this for a few more minutes?"

He looked over at her, then down at their hands, and nodded.

"Yeah. Okay."


	4. flares for the headhunters

**flares for the headhunters**

Satoko was fairly certain that before the day was done, Mion would be dead. Or at least gratuitously maimed. It wasn't the concept of losing that was so repulsive - though that was loathed, to be sure - so much as it was the subsequent humiliation. What actually gave the club its own sense of identity was to be found therein, and Satoko was mostly able to accept that. Every peculiar set of underwear, every gaudy hat and cape, every Mongolian Slave-themed Swimsuit she had ever been forced to wear was donned in full understanding and acquiescence of the principles that delivered her into those circumstances, no matter how slighting or demeaning they seemed at the time.

Forcing her to wear a T-Shirt that nearly hung to her knees while plainly stating "Honk If I'm Stupid" on both the front and back was going much, much too far.

If only for the fact they couldn't take two steps down the sidewalk without a horn blaring.

"Okay, what gives!" she finally shouted, turning to the road, small fists banging at invisible bars. "How can these people even know who I am?"

Mion tried, with not very much effort, to keep a straight face. "The shirt says it all. What more do they need to know?"

"Where do you _get_ these things, anyway?" Satoko muttered, kicking a loose stone into oncoming traffic.

"Family secret," Mion winked.

"If you think you're going to get away with this, you are gonna be sadly mistaken," Satoko stated, face flushing hot from mounting rage. "And what was wrong with a nurse outfit or something? At least that's somewhat creative."

"Psh. Sometimes simple is best, y'know?"

Rika smiled supportively. "I concur."

Satoko glared daggers. "_Do_ you now?"

A sequenced din of horns roared by, a blur within a mocking wind. As they walked along, passing various stores, Satoko couldn't help but notice that _every single person_ they walked by performed a very blunt double-take before breaking eye contact and trying not to laugh in a young girls' face. Most failed. Satoko had once been forced to trudge home wearing an insulated parka intended for travelers making a pilgrimage through the oblivion of a Siberian winter when it was over ninety-five degrees outside. This was ten times more frustrating.

Rena's hand fell to Satoko's shoulder from behind. "If it's any consolation, Satoko-chan, you do look very cute."

"It's not."

The hand yanked roughly, pulling Satoko into Rena's arms as she spun them both about. "That's good! That means I can love you all to myself!"

Mion burst into riotous laughter.

"Put me down! Stop laughing! I hate you all!"

A horn sounded from across the street.

"SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Mion shook her head, looking down at Satoko as she was rested back onto the pavement. "It's your own fault, y'know. If you hadn't come flying in with all the bravado about how I was going to be so ashamed at the mere thought of playing against you, I could have let it slide."

"How was I supposed to know you were so good at those claw machines? I thought I was the only one who knew the secret."

The club leader made tiny hooks with her fingers. "Practice."

Rika nodded. "I've seen you duck into that arcade quite a few times after visiting Shion at work, so it makes sense that you'd be pretty good at those games."

Satoko was dumbfounded. "W-Wait - you _knew_ she was seasoned? Where was that information ten minutes ago? I've been had!"

Mion's hand reached out, patting Satoko's soft blond hair. "Now now. Don't be _stupid_, Satoko-chan."

A car honked. Entire galaxies within Satoko, gardens of ancient dust and stars, blasted down into obsidian. Satoko lost quite often at club games. Sometimes she'd willingly take that burden upon herself out of some altruistic reason - Rika was in a bad mood and needed cheering up, Rena was being too pleasant to cast before Mion's tyranny, Mion did something outrageous and protective at her own expense for Satoko's sake. And other times she'd simply just lose. That seemed to be happening a lot lately. Much of her skillset appeared to have atrophied in the last few months. She was just distracted. Age, school, the future, the needles, the numb wall of people's shoulders, Satoshi. . .

It was a lot easier to get angry about it than think about why.

As they stood at the corner of an intersection, Rena spoke up. "Hm - is that a new store?"

Mion looked about. "What's this now?"

"At the corner across the street," Rena said, pointing. "Wasn't there a beef bowl there just a little while ago? They took the sign down."

Rika nodded. "They had to close. I heard the owner gambled a lot of money away to some yakuza cell in a card game and had to sell the deed off."

Mion scratched the corner of her mouth, looking down at Rika. "Y'know, for a ten year old who lives without adult supervision in a tiny village like ours, I sometimes have to wonder how you know all this stuff."

Rika just smiled pleasantly.

Mion laughed. "Right, right. I know. 'Nipaa'."

"Yep!"

"Well whoever it was that took over moved in pretty fast," Mion continued. She pushed herself onto her toes to see over the cars and people barring the open view to the other side of the street. "What's that say? 'Grand Opening'. Wow, informative."

"Well, if it's another restaurant, we're going in," Satoko announced. She began fishing through her pockets for her coin purse. "I'm starving."

Mion grinned, giving Satoko the thumbs up. "Hey, that's the spirit! Don't feel handicapped by your publicly broadcasted mental deficiencies!"

Rena smiled awkwardly. "Mi-chan, you seem quite. . . cruel today."

Satoko shrugged indifferently, as if the entire conversation was simply beneath her. "She just knows that I'm going to lay into her so hard she'll be spinning sideways for weeks. Honestly, she's such a child."

Mion shifted nervously. "Ha ha. . . haaa. . ."

Eyes glinting orange in the sun, Rika rocked back and forth on her feet, grinning pleasantly. "Satoko is really good at finding people's weaknesses. I'm kind of envious."

"Honestly," Mion said, lashes batting beneath sweaty brows, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

A car slowed as it folded into a turn, ramming its horn into their ears at close proximity before driving away. Mion burst out laughing again.

"Pffha ha ha ha! That's just not going to get old. I can't believe I didn't pull that thing out earlier."

Satoko's fingers flexed. "Count the minutes while you still can. . ."

Mion just smiled as the light changed. "Whatever, Cape Fear. Let's go take a peek already."

Through the nigh-molten heat of the summer sun they trudged across the street, its surface seething in visible anger. Satoko brushed her hand across her forehead. She had barely been outside for even ten minutes wearing that shirt and she already felt as if she was going to melt down to parched bone and hissing steam. Its thick and lengthy caress was heavy, weighing down on her small shoulders as if salty phantoms were grasping her skin with swollen, unseen hands. She took a quick stride to step into the shade of the brick wall once they had crossed over the curb, walking around the corner to the front of the store.

Rena's eyes leapt outward with a shine that could thaw the giant of Neptune. "Oh wow! A pet store! I haven't been in one of those in forever!"

"Uh . . ." Mion fidgeted, before turning to face the others. "So who wants beef bowl? My treat!"

"I'd like to go in!" Rena pouted.

"Rika is also interested," Rika threw in cautiously. "But. . ."

There was a gradual kinetic twist, everyone slowly turning to regard Rena with guarded concern. It was a force propelled forward by a kind of self-preservation, a system designed from memory to halt impending cataclysm. Some rules of the club could only be learned through experience, as words were obtrusive and ill-served to depict the horrendous face of reality. This was one of them.

"What?" Rena asked, blinking innocently at the trio of faces watching her in barely concealed alarm. ". . . No. Really?"

As one, they nodded.

"Is that all you guys see me as?"

A pause of thought. Again, they nodded. A car honked.

"I see," Rena sighed, somewhat dejected. In spite of her deflated poise, she began to walk toward the glass entrance anyway. "Well I'll have you know, I am mostly curious for intellectual reasons. It does made me a bit sad that you think I'm so shallow." Her hands pushly lightly, the door swinging open with a chime, the teenager stepping into the cool dim jungle within. "I mean I admit I do have moments of weakness, but not OH MY GOD THEY HAVE _TURTLES_!"

The other girls followed Rena's lead into the store in spite of their objections, even after warning had transformed into actuality. It wasn't an especially large store, and because of that it was very cramped and invasive. Rows of glass tanks filed in a pale symmetry, watery towers of fish in an imprisoning gauntlet. Dogs could be heard clamoring at the rear of the store, undoubtedly roused by Rena's bombastic stampede.

As the door closed behind them, Satoko let out a euphoric breath as she was struck by the wonderfully cold stream of air conditioning. Even then she had to admit Mion had really thought this one out. Not only was the grafitti insulting, but the threadwork was thick, dark and suffocating as well. It really was a punishment in every sense of the word.

Rena had rushed towards a tank full of turtles directly in front of the door to the absolute exclusion of all else. Her hands fell to the edge of the tank, fingers coiling over the glass, her entire body quaking from spasms of bliss. She was utterly encapsulated by a turtle that was lounging atop a rock by itself inside of the tank. "Oh oh oh oooooohhhhhhh - look at his little feet! And his tiny little tail! HE IS SOOOOOOO CUTE!"

One of the employees that had leapt out of Rena's way in order to avoid being flattened smiled awkwardly, looking down at the object of Rena's affection. "Actually Miss, that is a female turtle," she informed the teenager.

Rena blinked. "Oh. Well. . . _SHE_ IS SOOOOOOO CUTE! I -" Her eyes darted to the plastic tag that hung alongside the tank, and her entire demeanor extinguished in one melancholic rush. "- can't afford to take her home. . ."

Mion just sighed. "Man."

Rika shrugged, the debacle concluded, and smiled cheerfully. "Yay, turtles!" She walked up beside Rena, pressing her face and hands against the glass as she looked on. "They look so happy."

Rena bit her lip. "I know, I can't stand it!"

". . . Ew," Mion commented, her nose wrinkling as she look around. "Here's a smell I could do without."

It began as a faint sliver drifting around the wastes of thought, like most things that she eventually pulled together in spectacular cohesion, but Satoko could already see the revenge begin to take form. Each trap had to be constructed perfectly, and designed for one perfect person. Things like false ground that led to hilarious pitfalls were fine when they were feasible, but most of the time trapping someone required a very long stretch of ensnarements, almost all of which had to be invisible so the prey had no idea that they had already been captured.

Satoko scratched her arm, lost in thought.

Mion blinked, noticing that Satoko was just standing next to her. "You're not going to look at the puppies or something?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, puppies."

Mion's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I've got my eye on you, you know."

"Nothing to see. You're paranoid."

"Hey, Mion-chan."

"Huh?" Mion found herself turning at the familiar address, coming to find a short young man sitting behind the counter next to the door that looked extremely bored. It took several moments for her to recall exactly whom this person was, eventually coming to recognize him as her cousin twice-removed Hirotaka. "Oh hey! Long time no see. You work here?"

He nodded, turning to and fro on his swivel chair. "I should think so - I own the place. Pretty neat, eh?"

Mion didn't even bother to try to withhold the surprise from her voice. Hirotaka working made about as much sense as him going a month without standing before a judge, so finding that he _owned_ a business establishment was quite a shock. "Seriously? Um, congratulations, I guess. So. . . why?"

He shrugged. "So I was playing this card game, right?"

Completely uninterested in the banter, Satoko moved away from the door and begin to wander the aisles. She carefully wove her way through the maze of tanks and customers. She paused briefly as she stood before a tank of mildy spectral snakes that were apparently imported from New Guinea, a faint image rifling through her gathering plexus of deceit, but shook her head and kept walking. That was just too obvious. And she didn't really know much about snakes. It would be hilarious to throw one down Mion's pants, sure, but if it wound up biting her or something Satoko would probably feel bad about it eventually. She pushed onward, passing the aquatic and reptilian section and finding herself in a clamor of people surrounding several enthusiastic puppies.

And there it was. Lightning shredding fiery tendrils across the sky, scripting Mion's fall in electric finality. Satoko tilted her head back to look at the far wall - specifically, the rows of pet food - and then pushed every shred of willpower into keeping a straight face. She took a breath, making her way back to the front of the store, whistling happily. Doomsday sweltered in a foaming quasar, an imagined effigy of Mion falling into its shining plasma and being annihilated into pure energy.

_Honk at THIS, hag._

Satoko found Rika still watching the turtles, though Rena had wandered off somewhere else. That was fine. She tapped Rika's shoulder, smiling as she had her attention. "Rika, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"Go over to Mion-san and tell her this. . ."

Satoko made certain that Mion was still occupied, then leaned in to whisper Rika's part quietly.

Rika blinked. "But. . . I'm not."

"I know."

Rika put it together, grinning. "Ah. Okay. This should be interesting."

As Rika skipped over to talk to Mion, Satoko quickly scanned the store for Rena. It simply wouldn't do for Rena to be caught in the crossfire on this occasion. After all, had Rena not pushed forward into this store in the first place, Satoko would have been denied this vengeance. So Satoko didn't really look at it as salvation, so much as returning the favor. Unable to hold the grin back any longer, Satoko strode quickly over to where Rena was gasping and cooing to whatever weird creature had the misfortune of her attentions.

It was hardly the most elaborate trap Satoko had ever come up with, but Mion had said it herself: sometimes simple _was_ best.

Mion was listening distantly to Hirotaka's 'property acquiescence' story, already running together some kind of excuse for the girls being in the store since if what he was telling her was even remotely true, she was certain police would be storming the door in a matter of minutes.

"- so anyway, they didn't break his legs or anything, but it was pretty ugly for a few minutes there."

Mion felt a tug at her leg from behind, looking down to find Rika looking up at her.

"Mion?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah?"

Rika smiled. "The turtles are really cute."

Mion shrugged, not really seeing the appeal. "Yeah, I guess, if you like that kind of thing. Why, are you going to get one?"

"Maybe. But I should get some books on them first."

Mion nodded. "Good idea."

"Ah - um - they're on those shelves. . ."

"And you can't reach them. Right." She turned to look at her tattooed cousin and couldn't help but turn on the 'unrequested condescending lecture' part of her personality. "Hear that, Hirotaka? Not going to get a lot of business if your customers can't reach your products. Genius at work here, folks!"

Hirotaka shrugged. "Psh, she's like ten."

"I am ten," Rika supplied.

"Whatever. The point is, who cares?"

Mion just laughed. ". . . Yeah, I can see this place staying open for longer than a week. You should have called this place 'The Beached Fish'. Anyway. Alright Rika-chan, I'll see about those books."

"Thanks!"

By then Satoko had managed to man-handle Rena away from her fascination, gently tugging at Rena's wrist as the older girl looked back into the store in abject desperation.

"But - but - I'm not done yet. . . did you see those bunnies? Their ears are sooooooo floppy. . ."

Rika walked up to them. "Hee hee."

Satoko nodded, tilting her head in a gesture towards the door. "C'mere."

By then Rena had realized that something was in the process of unfolding, so she had ceased her resistance and allowed herself to be dragged to the front door. What exactly was happening was lost to her, but she knew that Satoko was about to unleash some twisted and evil design upon someone - not that she needed to ruminate long on the identity of the target - and she figured she was least likely to be hit with splashback if she was _with_ Satoko.

Mion continued to walk down the far aisle, her eyes searching the various books along the shelves.

Satoko tilted her head to the side, watching each of Mion's footfalls, counting down to extinction.

Rika simply watched everything with detatched fondness.

Rena really wished she could sneak a bunny or three out the back door somehow. . . and maybe a turtle, too. . . did bunnies get along with turtles?

Mion came to the end of the aisle. Satoko leaned back in savage realization.

"Watch and learn, my friends," she told them, teeth glinting in a carnal abyss. She took in a deep breath, raised her voice so that the entire store could hear her, and said: "SO AFTER WE'RE DONE WITH THAT, APPARENTLY MION-SAN WANTS ME TO HELP HER WITH THE BODIES."

The effect was instantaneous. All of the customers turned in surprise towards the front door, pulled away from whatever it was they were doing. Mion had whirled around in a gut reaction, her back to the front door when the proclamation had been broadcast, and it was the second after she turned that she realized her error. Because of the narrow structure of the store, aisles encroaching upon one another in wiry and glass advances, her shoulder struck a portable tower of pet food. Time wound down to elongated seconds, stretched to hideous and infinite horizons, and Mion was forced to watch in slow motion how the domino effect sprung forth - tower after tower of pet food ramming its weight upon that which rested beside it, a roaring wave of flying shards and capsules.

The entirety of the far wall was left in a hurricane of disarray. The tall and emerald funnel cloud had receded, left standing rigid, gazing back and the wreckage of their influence. Everything was silent, still.

Satoko's hand flew to her mouth. "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH HO HO HO HO!" Her hands shot out, grabbing Rena's and Rika's wrists. "Cheese it!"

A chime sounded once again as the door was flung open and the three girls bolted from the store. Mion pushed her face into her hands in sheer embarassment, trying to pretend that she was not standing as the obvious guilty party to one lengthy disaster. That everyone in the store wasn't staring at her in bemused hilarity, that one of those people wasn't her deadbeat cousin whom she had just lectured not one minute ago over being a moron.

She sighed, her face inflamed in red. "Damn it all, I walked right into that one like a complete idiot."

"Yeah, pretty much," Hirotaka agreed as he stood from his chair.

"Er - heh heh - sorry about the mess. It was an accident."

Hirotaka shrugged as he pulled a cardboard box from under the register and lifted it onto the counter. "Hey, don't worry about it."

"Thanks," Mion replied quietly, letting out a breath.

Hirotaka opened the box, pulled a lumpy unpressed mass from its interior, and then threw it in Mion's direction. She caught it and let it unravel, finding that she was holding onto an apron with the store's logo emblazoned across its middle.

She blinked. "The hell?"

"Gloves are in the pockets," Hirotaka told her, putting the box back underneath the register and sitting back down. "Some of that garbage is kinda slimy."

Mion glared at him. "You - You just said not to worry about it!"

"Right. Now clean this crap up. Jeez."

". . . I hate you."

"Yeah well. I've been hearing that a lot lately."


	5. fell on bad days

_Great respect and apologies this time around to Rubyhorse and rayemars. And a jovial tip of the hat to Sons of Butcher. Sometimes, kids will be kids._

**fell on bad days**

Keiichi stood before the closed window in his living room, peering cautiously at the reflection. Hikaru Ichijyo stared back at him. A soft amber glow from the lamp nestled atop a nearby coffee table smudged and obscured the night of invisible rain behind the glass, as Keiichi's fingers reached up to fiddle with his collar indecisively. It would have to do. The faux spacesuit was bulky and rather uncomfortable, stuffy to nearly the point of choking. But he supposed there was little he could do about that. This was all about aesthetics, not comfort. He mused it would have been a bit more routine or acceptable if he'd chosen to dress himself as a vampire or ghost or whatever, but he thought that was pretty uncreative and lackluster.

Perhaps people would think him something of a weirdo when he showed up dressed as a squadron commander from SDF-Macross, but that was fine. That was the kind of thing he liked, so that's what he was going to wear. Even if it caused him to die of heatstroke on a cool rainy evening while indoors.

Down the hall the bathroom door creaked open slightly, and Rena's head popped out. "Erm. . . sorry Keiichi-kun, but do you happen to have any bandages?"

"Yeah," he confirmed without turning around, trying to reattach the crest pinned to his uniform. "Open the mirror, should be a triage kit on the middle shelf. You okay?"

Rena closed the door, her voice returning to him in a soft muffle. "Yes! I'm just a bit clumsy."

The doorbell rang, and Keiichi forced himself to get his hands away from the suit. He'd been picking at its various threads for nearly twenty minutes, trying to adjust something he perceived as being off-center or crooked, and eventually realized that he'd pull the whole thing into frayed scraps of string before he was satisfied. He let out a breath and walked across the room.

"Well okay, don't hurt yourself or anything," he told Rena as he walked by the bathroom door towards the front entrance. "I think Mion's here."

He paused as he stood at the landing, hand poised midair. He had absolutely no idea what he was about to come face to face with, and thus needed a moment to collect himself. He wasn't sure whether or not he was about to be in the position of attack or defense, and that always lingering thrill of tension and uncertainty scattered about him in a skeletal hum. He opened the door, rainy haze spilling into the open home, and amid the torrent he suddenly found himself on the business end of a handgun.

"You're out of line, maverick! Misa-san is clearly the superior choice! Now drop and give me fifty!"

Keiichi had to exert physical effort not to burst out laughing. As predicted, Mion stood before him, pistol in one hand and umbrella held rigid in the other. Her hair was tucked neatly beneath a soft blue cap, tiny braids of emerald spilling out the rear, lulling wetly in the shadows. Various silver buttons ran the length of a dark blue jacket, gold pins glinting briefly atop her chest, white gloves creaking quietly in their grips. Even her dark shoes managed to emit a polished shine in spite of all the mud she must have trudged through. It was the most perfect police uniform Keiichi had ever seen in person, and the fact that was it was on _Mion_ made it absolutely hilarious for entirely ironic reasons.

Blocking entry to his home by leaning against the doorframe, he shrugged at her in indifference. "Aren't you behind. They wound up together anyway. It was on TV like two weeks ago. And besides - shouldn't you have gone with the 'you're under arrest' routine?"

"That's just lame, Kei-chan. You would have been expecting that," she told him matter-of-factually, holstering the superficial weapon at her side. She took a step closer so she was underneath the hanging awning, then lowered her umbrella and closed it. She glared at him as he lounged, tapping the tip of the umbrella's head atop the stone steps in emphasis. "Now get outta the way, it's cats and dogs out here damn it."

He eventually smiled briefly and obliged as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Entire diatribes about her chosen costume were already beginning to script themselves in his mind. Some he would save for later that night, some for the following day when he first saw Rika-chan and Satoko, and some would be loosed on her at the absolute earliest time of convenience. He wasn't naive enough to think that she wasn't doing the exact same to him at that moment.

Mion knelt to untie her shoes. "Rena-chan here yet?"

"Yeah, she's changing. All set?"

"Eh, more or less. I just hope Shion isn't pulling a fast one on me here. I'm going to be ticked if I show up overdressed and she's in jeans or something."

"I wouldn't worry about it. You look great."

Which was more or less the truth. So there was at least a certain degree of sincerity in that statement. Most, however, was the initial stages of his elaborate scheme to make a complete fool out of her later on. The kind of frenetic social fencing that few people other than her would really actually appreciate.

Caught off guard, Mion blushed slightly as she slipped her shoes off. "Um. Thanks. Took me forever to get into this thing. How about you, though? How much did that beast set you back?"

"Many, many dollars of money. Let's just leave it at that."

She laughed, bending to rest her umbrella next to what appeared to be Rena's. She turned and took a breath, looking at him directly. "So. You excited?"

He shrugged. "I guess so."

"That wasn't very enthusiastic."

"I've never been to a party like this before. I have no idea what to expect. Or even if they'll take us seriously since we'll probably be the youngest people there."

"It's a costume party, I really don't think anyone will be taking anything seriously."

"I detect uncertainty."

"Can't say I've ever been to a party like this before either, so. . . yeah." Mion removed her cap to reach up and straighten her hair somewhat. As she did she met his eyes bashfully. "I'm sorry if I kinda forced it onto you guys. I just thought it would be more fun if you were there. And I'd be a bit more comfortable with people I know seeing me look like a fool."

Keiichi began to walk down the hallway, looking over to her as she fell into step beside him. "So is Shion really going to this college next year?"

"Dunno. Probably. She seems excited about it. Though between you and me, I get the feeling she's more interested in getting drunk."

He smirked. "Hah, somehow I'm not surprised."

As they came to the bathroom door, Mion paused. She tapped her wrist against the door twice and raised her voice. "Rena-chan, you in there?"

". . . Yes," came the eventual answer. "I'll be out in a minute!"

Mion looked over to him. "How long's she been in there?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Is this a laced question?"

"Good eye!" she remarked grinning. She pointed at him. "Seems you're wising up."

"I have vast skills of evolution and change," he boasted.

"Pff, no. Skills of _getting_ changed, you mean."

Although Mion never actually stated it directly, Keiichi was able to note the concern through her actions. It was not his place to entangle his friends in true discomfort or shame, so he had never actually asked Rena _why_ she politely inquired if she could change at his house. He had simply agreed. It wasn't difficult to see the new and growing distance about her, as she hoisted her burdens in ways that would conceal them from others. Days sinking in mires of time. If her home had ceased to become any kind of sanctuary, Keiichi was more than willing to allow her whatever shelter he could provide.

He could see the same kind of orbiting watchfulness, a soothing assurance of questions unasked, in Mion's eyes when she glanced at the closed door.

"Okay. . ." Rena stated shyly, sliding the door open and stepping into the hallway with them. "I'm done. I think."

Both Keiichi and Mion were staggered by a tremor of incredulity. Sure, Keiichi had seen the brief flash of white fabric when Rena had ducked into the bathroom earlier, but all of his expectations and musings were nowhere near accurate. Rena stood before them in a white polyester two-button single breasted suit with a matching waistcoat; widened jacket lapels above flared trousers. A black and white broken line stripe shirt with a single cuff, a pointed collar parted by a modest bridge. A set of matching high-heeled brogues rested in her hands. Though in her case the buttons rose a bit higher and were less revealing, Rena was otherwise the spitting image of Saturday Night Fever's Tony Manero, had he been played by a japanese teenage girl with orange hair.

Mion looked at Rena's blushing face, eyes gleaming in appreciation. "Wow. Awesome! You look great, Rena-chan."

"Yeah," Keiichi agreed, nodding sincerely. "I'm impressed. Ten out of ten."

Rena smiled at the praise. "Hee hee. . . thanks. It feels a bit awkward."

"Obviously," Mion agreed, then jerking a thumb in Keiichi's direction. "I mean, look at this guy. Imagine how he must feel wearing that."

Keiichi frowned. "Oy."

"True," Rena said, appraising Keiichi's costume with an approving spark. She followed the pair as they turned and walked into the living room to sit down while they waited for their ride to arrive. Keiichi plopped down on the couch and Mion sat next to him, while Rena sat in a chair facing the pair. It wasn't until after they'd somewhat situated themselves that Mion finally noticed the only blemish to Rena's otherwise pristine costume.

". . . Are you okay? What happened to your neck?"

Rena blinked, the bandage already forgotten. "Huh?"

"Catch yourself on something?"

"Oh? This?" Rena's hand instinctively rose to touch lightly upon the cotton gauze strip across the side of her throat which was now colored a faint pink from the blood soaking beneath. "No. I'm not. . . sure where I picked it up. It's no big deal. It's just a small cut."

Mion didn't appear convinced. "Hmm. . ."

"Honestly," Rena told her, "it's fine."

Mion shrugged. "If you say so."

A sequence of silent moments rode by, the three of them shifting in various sensations of discomfort. Rain could be heard in a soft choir at the window, thunder trampling across the sky in distant bursts of noise.

Keiichi sighed. "Man this is so uncomfortable."

"It looks like it," Mion commented.

"No, I mean, us sitting around in these things."

Rena spoke in agreement. "Yes. It's surreal. I feel out of place." Something she'd failed to express earlier crossed her mind, and she turned to Mion and smiled warmly. "Mi-chan, you look really really cute."

Mion grinned modestly. "Hah! You think so?"

Rena nodded happily.

"Well. . . good! I'm hoping I come off as the most memorable of the pair."

"What's she going as?" Keiichi asked.

"We decided it'd be fun to do a kind of twin thematic thing, so she's my opposite."

He blinked as he tried to tie that one together. "A. . . perp?"

"Right," Mion confirmed. She casually began smoothing the left arm of her jacket. "I have no idea what that's going to look like. If she even wears a costume in the first place. Like I said, if the costume aspect of this was all some joke at our expense, she's a dead woman."

Rena sighed, looking down at her own outfit. "I wish I'd have seen the movie. I'm worried people are going to ask me about it."

Mion looked at her in surprise. "Why?"

"Eh. . . I mean, look. I'm wearing men's clothing. I still think it looks odd."

Mion couldn't help but grin. "It doesn't. _Trust_ me. You've got nothing to worry about."

Keiichi took a moment to look at what the girls had assembled as far as packages went, and became somewhat alarmed when he noticed they had nothing with them aside from footwear or other additional accessories they would apply later on. He looked between them and asked in hope against the obvious, "So. . . what are you guys bringing?"

Mion blinked at him. "Um. . . myself?"

Massive numerals of wasted money spun behind his eyes. "Whaaat? Didn't you buy anything? You know, like food?"

"Why would I do that?" Mion asked, looking at him like he was an idiot.

"It's a party, stupid! You're supposed to bring things! At least. . . I thought we were?"

Rena shook her head. "I don't remember hearing that."

"So I bought all that ready-made yakitori for nothing?" he despaired. He was going to find a way to tag his father back for that one. Perhaps his parents simply led different lives in their youth, but it had been imposed upon him quite thoroughly that respected and courteous guests always brought something useful to a party. He thought that seemed like a rather asinine philosophy when it was an open house fraternity affair, but he'd gone out all the same and spent hard-earned money on the advice.

"Mm, that sounds tasty," Mion commented, helpfully pushing salt into the newly opened wound. "Good thinking!"

Keiichi wasn't sure at that moment what was the greater folly: actually squandering valuable yen like that, or admitting it in front of Mion. But then he knew himself well enough to know that he was the kind of person who'd willingly make a fool of himself if it'd distract those around them from what they felt was uncomfortable. He agitatedly scratched the back of his head. "That's embarrassing. I'm not gonna. . . so neither of you bought anything at all?"

"Nyet," Mion repeated.

Rena shrugged. "I _did_ consider it, but I forgot to go shopping yesterday."

"Well that's just great. Then I'm not bringing anything. Man, what a waste of money."

Mion leaned back into the couch, her face lifting in consideration. "Well now we've all got nothing. Right? You can't just make us all party crashers, you know. We can salvage this. Just say that we all brought those yakitori together. You know, as a group. I'm sure no one will mind."

"Sans _me_, sure," he sighed, rolling his eyes. "I didn't blow all this money on dozens of frozen food helpers so _you_ could rake in the rewards."

Mion looked across the room at Rena in disbelief. "Damn. Is this guy selfish, or what?"

"Well. . . I wouldn't want to force Keiichi-kun to do something he feels is wrong," Rena carefully answered.

"This isn't a moral dilemma," Mion argued. "Come on now. It's chicken on a stick. Let's go."

Keiichi waved his hands as if denying a field goal. "Nope, not happening. Sorry. If you want to _pay_ me for part of it, then sure, but otherwise. . ."

Mion forced herself to stand so she towered over the boy, her hands on her hips and a frown creasing her brows. "Ugh! Don't you understand yet, Kei-chan? A huge wave of college partying is coming! So you should come too! With your meat! _Right_ into people's mouths!"

Mion promptly burst into laughter at her own joke as Keiichi just folded his face into his hands at how horrible it was.

Rena was trying to stifle a surge of indignant giggles. "Mi-chan, you're just terrible!"

"Lies," Mion defended, turning and pointing to the plastic badge atop her uniform. "See this? I'm a positive influence."

"Positively **filthy**, maybe," Keiichi muttered.

Mion smacked him in the back of the head. "There will be no further comments from the peanut gallery on this matter." She was about to launch into a further lecture when the phone began to ring. Mion looked across the room at the blaring device before looking back down at Keiichi. "Are you expecting a call?"

"No."

Mion pointed across the room. "It's probably Shion then. She knows we're here. Mind if I. . . ?"

"All yours," he agreed.

Mion strode across the room and paused before lifting the receiver. She first cleared her throat into her clenched fist and caught the device on the fourth ring, speaking into the mouthpiece in her best Keiichi impersonation before even listening to hear the identity of the caller. "Hi! This is the Maebara residence. Keiichi speaking. I'm a huge tightwad!"

He shot to his feet. "You idiot! What if that was one of my relatives?"

Mion's face twisted in elaborate melodrama. ". . . Oh. I'm sorry, Maebara-san. He just told me to answer the phone that way. Hm? Oh, yeah, I guess as his Uncle you'd know how much of a jerk he was, right? Ha ha ha." She paused to look over at Keiichi, a grin sweeping across her as she dropped the pretense. "Nah, he's not really buying it, but his face is pretty hilarious right now. I'm sure we're his favorite people in the whole world."

Keiichi simply sat back down on the couch, and looked over at Rena. "So. . . tapping someone's phone-line. Expensive? Difficult? Think I could pull it off?"

"Not if you bring the idea up right in front of her, no, probably not," she answered. Then she winked. "But that's where bait and switch tactics really shine."

A terrifyingly evil luster lapsed across his eyes. "Do go on."

". . . What? Why?"

Both Rena and Keiichi turned to Mion as her jubilation crumbled. She caught the two of them staring at her, her gaze then shifting down to the floor.

"That really sucks. There's nothing- why now?" Mion sighed and pressed her free hand against her forehead. "I know it's not your fault." She paused, listening. "Ah now I feel bad. I hope he's okay. So there's no way around it? . . . . . Yeah. Yeah. . . " Her head shook, even though Shion clearly wouldn't see the gesture. "No, it's okay, I'm sure they'll understand. Can't be helped, right? . . . . No it's okay. Really, don't worry about it. All I really want to know is -" A soft and demure laugh escaped her. "Yeah, you read my mind. I did too. Took me like forty five minutes to get it all straightened out. Oh well. . . . . True, we do have to do that. Maybe next weekend? Well, tell Kasai-san I hope his hand is okay. Talk to you later."

She gently set the receiver back into its cradle before looking to them in apology. "Sorry guys. Night's off."

"What happened?" Keiichi asked.

"Kasai's front tires were slashed by some wannabe biker losers. Shion said he wound up beating the crap out of them, but he hurt his hand in the process. Not that it matters now anyway, since they have no way to come by to pick us up. So we're stuck. No party."

"That's really too bad," Rena lamented. "I was really looking forward to it."

Mion plopped back down on the sofa beside Keiichi. "Weren't we all. Dammit, this sucks."

Keiichi shrugged. "Nothing we can do about that. I don't have the kind of yen we'd need for a taxi to take us all the way to the campus and back on hand."

"Same," Mion realized. "Crap."

The rain against the walls became centerpiece as silence elongated. There was nothing other than the bitter and frustrating bruising of plans being unraveled by the intervention of reality. After a long and uncomfortable moment, Rena spoke, her hand resting lightly against her bandage.

"So what now? I don't really feel like going home."

"Ditto," Mion agreed.

Keiichi took a breath. "Not like we can really go anywhere for the same kind of fun on our bikes with this rain. And honestly, I wouldn't really want to be seen riding around dressed like this anyway."

Mion smiled. "You'd think you'd be used to it by now."

"Yes, you'd think that."

Rena moved to speak again, but smothered the gesture. Her right hand met with her left, softly nursing at a large and dark gash along her left wrist, skin glowing concealed damage. Her fingers tread outside her thoughts, moving with the calm of a morning surf, and she gazed distantly at the window on the other side of the room. At the world drowning behind a flaxen sheen.

Mion saw the sudden retraction, but could do nothing about it. "Guess that's that then." She stood, hands stuffing roughly into her pockets. "Guess we'll head home."

Rena nodded. ". . . Yes, I suppose so."

Keiichi was silent for a moment, then, "You guys don't _have_ to. We could hang out here for a while or something."

"Wearing these gaudy things?" Mion asked, blinking.

He shrugged. "Why not? Who cares?"

"Alright," Mion conceded, face brightening slightly. "Actually. . . sure. That sounds fun."

Rena turned back to them with a smile. "And it's a bit less embarrassing, in truth. I really wanted to go, but at the same time, I kind of didn't. You know?"

Mion threw her hands in the air. "THANK YOU, I was freaking out about that too. I know this is supposed to be the kind of thing people our age really like, and- well- I guess I was curious more than anything."

"Not like there won't be another chance," Keiichi added.

"Yeah. I definitely like us together like this instead of - um, well, whatever." Mion took a moment to stretch, and then pointed down at Keiichi commandingly. "Just so you know, we're eating your yakitori."

"Fine," he sighed. "I suppose we could do that."

"'We' meant me and Rena-chan, buddy. I'm not sure I can approve of such delicious things touching your selfish tongue. Though I suppose it would be acceptable for you to prepare it for us. . ."

He rolled his eyes, standing. "Oh please, I wouldn't want your bony hands involved in the process anyhow." As he began to move across the room towards the kitchen, he paused as he remembered something. "Want me to call Rika-chan and Satoko?"

Mion shook her head. "They went into the city to see some movie or something with some of the boys from school and their parents. So it'll just be us young turks tonight I think."

"Right, I forgot all about that."

Rena took that opportunity to stand. "I'm going to go change out of this jacket then. It's a bit stuffy."

Mion whirled to face the younger girl. "Oh, not yet! Come on!"

Rena blinked. "Why not?"

"You know why," Mion said coyly.

"Um. . . no, I really don't. Why?"

"I have to ask? Dance, Rena-chan!"

Rena's face was struck with a deep blush of surprise. "Eh? What?"

Mion pointed at Rena's suit. "You're John Travolume, right? Let's see some moves first!"

Keiichi's eyebrow arched from the doorway. "Isn't it Travolta?"

"Semantics!" Mion cried, refusing to lose her footing on the issue. She turned and tilted her head towards the stereo on the far side of the room. "Kei-chan, put on some music real fast. This could be a once in a lifetime opportunity here."

Rena shook her head. "I - um - I can't. . . I can't dance."

"So what?" Mion shrugged.

"It's embarrassing."

"But that's the hook!"

Keiichi sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "Mion, you need to compromise. You can't make some huge request like that without a little bit of sacrifice."

"Meaning what?"

A vicious, toothy gleam crossed his features. "Meaning you're dancing with her."

Mion gaped at him. "Say what?"

Suddenly everything had changed. Glory could only be achieved through the violent and abrupt end of stability. It was too late for her to withdraw at that point, the rug had already been pulled and the swords already been pointed, and Keiichi knew it. "Not right now. I have to fish through my parents room for a sec to find their camera. But then - you, and her - are both dancing."

Mion's feet seemed to meld with the floor. Even then she tried to play the retreat card. ". . . Okay, deal's off! Waiter, where's my chicken on a stick?"

"Very well," Rena said suddenly. "I'll do it."

"Score!" Mion cheered.

"If **both** of you dance with me," Rena finished, innocent smile failing to hide the sweltering rush of control surging beneath.

Mion swallowed. "Uh. . ."

Keiichi laughed. "Hah! Too transparent. Okay. We've got a deal."

"Don't make decisions for _me_, lesser creature!" Mion rallied, glaring at him. "Besides, you can probably dance. I won't stand for you making me look like a fool."

He rolled his eyes. "Dumbass. Look at us! We're wearing moronic fashion mishaps in a tiny living room in the middle of nowhere! We already look like fools. Why stop there?"

Rena shifted her grip on her dress shoes, face lighting a rosy shade as courage gradually returned. "Hee hee. . . can you really dance, Keiichi-kun?"

"Pff, hell no," he answered, shrugging in an animated loop, his suit billowing from the movement. "But I'm willing to make a fool of myself if I'm not the only one. And let's face it, I'm going to get the worst of it. At least you guys are wearing something resembling clothing."

"And you're still willing to go through with it?" Mion asked incredulously.

"Sure," he said readily, smiling. "I don't mind. You'd be surprised how much I'd be willing to go through if it meant humiliating you even a little bit. And come on, where's your club spirit?"

With that, he knew he'd snared her. It was the plunging of Damocles' floating arm, bereft of restraint and slashing without pause. If there was anything to be gleaned from Keiichi's frequent arrival at ignominious ends, it was how to turn and observe the circumstances. Whom could possibly understand how to lose other than those that lost?

Mion rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. ". . . This is so embarrassing."

Keiichi shook his head. "We haven't even started yet."

"I know! And I'm already embarrassed!"

Without delay, Keiichi strode over to the other side of the room where his parents stereo rested. He knelt down in a crinkling of scratchy fabric, opening the small glass doors to leaf through the records and tapes contained therein. He'd never really shared his parents musical taste, but then, he couldn't honestly say he even really knew what that would constitute as either. He didn't ask, and they didn't tell. That was fine with him. He pulled the velcro straps off his wrists so he could free his hands from the large gloves, his fingers then running over the various titles.

Mion just shook her head. "I can't believe we're doing this."

"It was your idea," Rena laughed.

"I **so** didn't need to be reminded of that, thanks." Mion paused and squirmed in the heavy atmosphere. She looked back and forth between her friends as she pulled the topic she'd been debating internally over for the last week back to the front of her thoughts. It was her responsibility to them to handle these kinds of things. She spoke uncomfortably. "Alright then. Now, I think we all had expected to. . . you know. Have a bit of alcohol at the party. Am I right?"

Keiichi flipped a few records aside in the pile, answering without turning. "Yeah, guess so."

Rena didn't answer.

"So I don't want to be the enabler here, but I'm going to throw out the idea that we might as well go off and be stupid all the way if we're going to be stupid at all. You know what I mean?"

"My Dad'll flip if he finds out we've been drinking his liquor," he told her.

Mion shrugged. "Not my problem."

Keiichi pulled one of the records from the stack to read over its contents. "Oh, if I get in trouble for it, you'd better believe I'm going to make it your problem."

"Fine. I can live with that. Rena-chan?"

Rena looked away, biting her lip nervously. "Um. . . I think I'll pass. Sorry."

Mion shook her hands in front of her quickly. "No no. No worries at all, you're probably making the right choice here. But I - ahhhh." She pulled off her hat and roughly tousled her hair. "Annoyed."

Things weren't really going in the direction that Mion had foreseen, but then that all started when the night had been called off in the first place. She was riven by a sense of duty accompanied with the feverish curiosity of youth; innocence reaching out and demanding to be tarnished, to forsake itself, to live in palaces of dirt in the stead of vaults of empty purity. "Okay then. I suppose I have no choice. It is left to me, your beloved leader, to brave the waters of the unknown so I can tell you just what lies on the other side. It's a big and scary world, my friends."

Keiichi snorted audibly. "Cut the maudlin crap already. Just go help yourself if you're that desperate." He pushed several records back into their positions on the rack. "My parents have really strange taste."

Mion tapped her foot as she was observing his movements. "Some host you make. And who said I was desperate? I'm just curious. Aren't you?"

"Sure," he admitted. He sighed. "Alright, I'll see what we have."

Mion let out a breath. "Hee hee, this is kind of a weird thrill, don't you think? Our youth is right here for the taking."

Keiichi simply rolled his eyes in response. "This mixed tape is probably our best bet," he stated, powering the analogue deck up. The heavy-set speakers positioned at the polars of the room came to life with a static hum, surrounding them in a very soft pneumatic slurring. "I don't really think Chopin or Liszt translate well into something that we're looking for."

Mion's hands coiled tightly around her hat as a harrowing thought occurred to her. "Your. . . your parents aren't going to suddenly walk in the door, are they?"

"God Mion, lighten up," Keiichi said as he stood, turning and laughing at her. "It's just us having fun."

"Maybe so, but I really need to have this information."

His eyes glinted mischievously. "Who can say? They might. They could march in here at any moment."

Mion swallowed heavily. "Yeah. Not so enthusiastic about that."

Rena's hand fell softly on the mahogany of one of the speakers. "Keiichi-kun, you told me earlier that your parents were visiting some relatives in Kashiwazaki and wouldn't be back until late Sunday evening?"

"Shh!" Keiichi insisted, his finger rising to his lips. "Be very quiet, I'm hunting idiots!"

Mion just about punched him in the face right there. "Oh that does it." Her head whirled around, searching about the room with ravenous abandon. With enough clarity of mind not to fling everything from atop its surface in a burst of passionate rage, she lifted a silver tray and several coasters that were resting atop the coffee table in the center of the room and placed it on the floor. After which she dropped to her knees, jamming her cap back on her head and began rolling up the right sleeve of her jacket, glaring up at Keiichi all the while. "You and me. Right now. Let's go."

"You want to _arm wrestle_?"

"I can punch you in the junk if you'd rather. Either way I'm not letting that slide."

Seconds ticked by in an acoustic murmur, devices buzzing like dozens of blanketed insects. Eventually Keiichi just rolled his eyes. "Do you want a drink and some yakitori before we have fun, or do you want to be petulant and waste the opportunity?"

Rena smiled, pointing at Mion, looping the conversation back a few minutes. "Oooh, now that's a moral dilemma. It is!"

Mion halted in her mad vertical scourging, realizing that she'd been trapped yet again. "Okay. I get the message. Let's get something to eat."

Keiichi nodded, turning to start the tape deck. "Alright. I'll just pop it into the oven for a few minutes."

Rena blinked at him. "Were you going to take it cold to the party?"

He flustered at the question. "I figured we could swing by Shion's apartment and I could heat it up there or something. I don't know. I guess I really wasn't thinking."

She couldn't help but chuckle at how typically Keiichi Maebara that was. His attention was something as singular as it was powerful. He could meticulously analyze and dissect whatever had captivated him, but in doing so, many smaller fragments of things not immediately present could drift by him without notice. It was that kind of magnetic stumbling that she really cherished about him, and knew instinctively that she was not the only one.

". . . Um, Rena-chan. . ."

Rena blinked at Mion's address. "Yes?"

Mion pointed. "Your neck is bleeding."

A swift tilt of her jaw caught the flow. Somehow her bandage had failed, moved aside the stream, a thin trail dripping along the collar of her white jacket leaving the prints of a growing ruby spider. Her fingers flew to the wound, a face returning to color immediately receding to a pallid ash. "Oh," she whispered, "Not again. I just fixed it."

Mion stepped up to her, hand touching the younger girl's shoulder and squeezing lightly. "Are you really okay? That's- um, that's- it's a lot of blood."

"Yes," Rena replied, her tone clipped. "It doesn't hurt. I just don't know where I got it from. Let me - um, Keiichi-kun, is it okay if I take another bandage?"

"Of course," Keiichi replied, looking over at her in frank concern. "That's what they're there for. Go ahead, you don't have to ask for that kind of thing."

"Thank you. Be right back."

Rena immediately extricated herself from Mion's uncertain grasp, walking briskly down the hall and into the bathroom. Both Mion and Keiichi were left standing atop the putrid shoulder of inability and distance. How to intervene before someone who denied the existence of anything requiring intervention was a nightmare of powerlessness. It was their place as Rena's friends to respect her privacy, and if she didn't want their help, it was a decision they would have to grudgingly abide by. An impossible task as neither Keiichi nor Mion would ever accept that as the answer. Friendship superseded safety. Love negated oneself.

Mion turned searchingly to Keiichi. He was looking intensely at the closed door of the bathroom, rooted in the wheel that spun like a broken film projector; revolving wildly with the blinking of an iris without picture. Eventually he met her eyes with an empathetic sigh, tilting his head to the kitchen. She nodded and they both made their way out of the living around the time that Rick Springfield began to croon about his compulsion to lust after his best friend's lover.

". . . She's lying," Mion said, immediately stating the obvious as they changed rooms. "There's no way that doesn't hurt. Or that she didn't know -"

Keiichi opened the fridge. "Yeah."

Mion swallowed. "Do. . . you know how she _did_ that?"

"She did it herself," he said woodenly, pulling out a tray of chilled tebasaki yakitori on bamboo skewers and placing it on the counter. He came very close to slamming the door shut, but caught himself in the middle of the act and closed it gently. "She's been scratching at her neck a lot over the last few days I've noticed. I was going to say something, but I didn't want to embarrass her. But she was really bleeding just now, I didn't realize it was that. . . Does she have allergies?"

Mion shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Even if she did, that's. . ."

Keiichi drummed his fingers against the counter in thought. A moment later he perked up in remembrance, his hands reaching down to the utensil cabinet. He pulled a silvery bottle opener free and re-opened the fridge, retrieving a bottle of beer from the top shelf and then closing the door again with his foot. He placed the bottle on the table in front of Mion, popping the cap off with a sibilant hiss. He forced himself to smile. "Well, here we go, Skull-Two. Hope you're happy."

All things aside, Mion couldn't help but laugh. "You're such a geek."

He found himself blushing in embarrassment. "Shut up. I was trying to be clever."

"And it was. Congratulations. You're still a dummy." She looked down at the bottle, listening to its frothing contents bubble underneath the music lingering from the other room. She was immediately confronted with the fact that she really didn't _want_ to drink anything. But it was here, and these were probably as safe as any kind of introductory circumstances as she could imagine, so. . .

She cleared her throat, playing back into his dialect - as cheesy as it was. "Okay. Cover me, I'm flying this one solo." Having no idea what the etiquette for such a thing was, she simply raised the bottle to her lips and took a brief pull, the thick amber liquid spilling into her mouth in a cold and syrupy rush. She lowered her hand, grimacing at the bottle for the atrocity it had just leased upon her. ". . . Bleeeeeeech. This - this shit is. . . well, _shit_."

"Just so you know, if you end up puking, you're cleaning it up."

"Oh please."

"That ain't an idle threat."

Mion set her jaw, feeling really out of place. She blinked once, slowly, before offering the bottle to Keiichi. "You?"

Keiichi blinked. "Um. . ."

"What?"

"You. . . want me to drink from that?"

"Uh -" After the poignant gouging at her lungs as she'd held Rena's shoulder, looking into her confused and frightened eyes, Mion had found some of the more minuscule details of her surroundings were escaping her. She looked at the tip of the bottle, its ring glistening with the ghost of her mouth, and realized the implication that Keiichi had interpreted but she had not implied. She just laughed. "Grow up, Kei-chan. I didn't mean it that way, and you know it. I just figured that you'd want to keep the consumption down to a minimum so you wouldn't get in trouble."

Keiichi turned and began to fiddle with the knobs on the oven. "I'm not going to get in trouble."

"Huh?"

"My Dad sat me down a few days ago when he learned I was going to the frat party and talked to me about- whoa, okay, no. Not telling you _that_. But he won't be too upset."

Mion gazed at him dumbfounded. "But you just said a few minutes ago that he would."

He opened the oven door and turned to pick up the tray, and smiled obnoxiously at her. "That was just to make your life difficult."

"Fine. You get none," Mion informed him, forcing herself to finish what she'd started and drink the rest of the beer. She tilted the bottle back, figuring this was something she'd have to grow into liking or something.

Keiichi slid the tray onto the metal grate with a hollow clang, lifting the oven door up. He looked over at her inquisitively. "Didn't you _just_ say it was terrible?"

"It is," she agreed. "It's freaking awful." She continued drinking.

"So. . ."

Mion waved her hand. "It's all posture."

He turned the oven light on and then pulled a chair up to the table, sitting across from her. "I won't think any less of you if you don't want to, you know. I'm sure Rena wouldn't either. This isn't the party, this is my house."

"What are you talking about?"

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. You want to play it like that, go ahead. But honestly. You don't need those kind of barriers here, y'know? You don't like it, you don't like it. So what?"

Mion sighed angrily, slowly rolling the bottom of the bottle on the table between her hands. "I hate how you can do that."

"What? Call you on your stupidity?"

"Well. . . yeah! See right through me. It's so annoying." Looking into the dark sea within the ship-less model, tower of foam and loss of self, Mion realized how stupid it all was. She wasn't even doing it because she wanted to. She had simply assumed this was an expectation or desire stemming from the canvas of normal people, and it was her task to survive it first. Keiichi was right. She sighed, standing and walking over to the sink and upending the remaining contents of the bottle down the drain. "Um. . . I hope your Dad won't be mad I'm wasting it like this."

"He won't," he assured her. "It's no big deal. Don't worry about it. I probably should have gotten you some wine or sake or something."

"Nah. Thanks anyway. Curiosity sated."

Rena took that moment to enter the room cautiously, looking between them sheepishly. "Sorry about that. I just didn't want to stain the jacket. . . but it looks like I was too late to save it."

"No apologies necessary," Mion assured her.

Rena stood next to the kitchen table, looking over at the oven and through the glass to the yakitori heating within. Her hair was frazzled in splotches and damp in others, a soft orange mimicry in tune and shape. She spared a glance to the stereo in the living room as the music continued to flood throughout the house. She tried to return conversation back to the point prior to her sudden flight. "Even with just you two here, it's still kind of scary."

Mion shook her head. "You don't have to. I was mostly teasing. If you really aren't interested, it's fine."

Keiichi snorted. "You're just giving yourself an exit. That's pretty selfish."

"No, no," Rena said just a little too quickly. "Let's do it still. It's just one of those things in life we have to force ourselves through, right?"

"I guess," Mion relented, forcing a smile. "We'll just have to make it fun." Her eyes narrowed as she noticed the slipping cloth, and she stepped up to Rena and reached without asking to her throat. "Here -"

Rena reflexively took a step back. "Wh-What?"

"It's not right," Mion said. "Careful." Her fingers stretched gently across the mesh, pushing the strip further down Rena's neck so it would better overlap the crimson stain. She looked very serious about the task, concentrating as if dismantling an armed explosive. Once satisfied she rested her hand on Rena's shoulder again, looking her directly in the eyes. "Okay? I think that's better. Are you in pain?"

Had there even been a walling of defenses about Rena in the short time she had spent away, they were completely overwhelmed all the same. Wounded and cornered, backed down into a submissive prison by some intangible horror, her entire body wracked with trembles of unmitigated panic. Some space had just been breached, skin and shelter torn raw and bare, and Mion could see without much difficulty the beginning of a collapse. Rena's hand rose hastily to brush Mion away.

"I - um. . . I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I'll be right back again, okay?"

Mion's arm fell before the door barring Rena's escape, unwilling to break eye contact. "Rena-chan, what's wrong?"

Rena shook her head. "I'll be right back. Okay? Okay?"

"Please don't do anything stupid," Keiichi said quietly.

"I. . ."

Mion looked between them, then asked, "Do you want him to leave? Would that be easier?"

Keiichi stood. "I can if that's what you need. It's alright."

"No!" Rena insisted. "Don't be silly. . ."

Keiichi's knuckles pressed hard into the table. "When you. . . You aren't -"

"No," she murmured. "I'm not. I promise. I guess it looks like that, but I'm not. I just. . . I just. . . I guess I'm just freaking out a little. About. . . I'm not doing anything like _that_. I'll really be right back. I just need another minute to calm down. Okay?"

Mion sighed, letting her arm fall. "Okay."

Rena nodded gratefully and walked back out of the room. Mion just stood at the doorway, looking emptily at the space where the younger girl had just been standing.

Keiichi sat back down. ". . . What's happening? Do you know something I don't?"

Mion removed her hat once again and rested it on the table. Her fingers curled around the back of the chair she had been sitting in. Her voice was very far away. ". . . I can't tell you for sure. But. . . it's been tough for her lately. Her stepfather came to town last week. There was something her parents had to discuss, about a shared bank account or something. And her mother wouldn't deign to see him herself so she sent - it's stupid. And her stepfather and her father's girlfriend got into some huge fight right in front of her. They were both calling Rena names and everything. I - ah. Sorry, I shouldn't be telling you this."

Keiichi glanced at the oven. "Yeah, probably not."

"I'm sorry."

"No it's okay. It's my fault for prying. I should be asking her to her face. It's rude of me."

"I don't think she sees it that way, but you're probably right," she said, sitting back down in the chair. Her nearsighted venture was running about her mind, sinking barbed talons into her heart at what had been ultimately wrought. She buried her face in her hands. "I feel like an asshole."

Keiichi looked over at her in concern. "Why?"

"I. . . Well I talked Shion into tonight. She was going, but it was my idea for us to come. At the time, I thought. . ."

"For Rena," Keiichi observed, his voice softening. "How is that wrong? You were watching out for her. How is that not _right_?"

She shook her head, hands gripping to bloodless skin as her fingers clawed against her temples. "Because it pushed her even further into this - this, whatever it. . . I thought tonight would be fun for her, so I forced Shion to let us tag along. But I guess I never considered how stressful it could be for some people."

Keiichi reached across the table and lightly rested his hand affectionately on her head. "You were thinking in the right way, at least. We should probably do something nice for her. Plan it out together, so we know she'd like it. I bet. . . I can't even really imagine how alone she's probably feeling."

He knew Mion well enough. Knew enough to know that she would burn her very cells to cinders if it would spare her friends even the slightest agony. That's why he could by no means allow her this kind of self-revulsion and scorn. He also knew Rena well enough that she would _never_ blame Mion for tonight. Perceived expectations were only walls if allowed.

Mion's hands fell away from her face as Keiichi's hand receded, and she sat back looking somewhat flushed. "Okay. Good idea. Any thoughts on as to what?"

"Hmm. Maybe. I'll talk to Rika-chan and Satoko and see what they think, then I'll get back to you. Those two are pretty good at that kind of thing."

Mion nodded. "Sounds good. Keep me informed."

"So how about you?"

"Hm?"

Keiichi decided if they were already on this wavelength, he might as well continue. "You've seemed. . . kinda down lately. Everything okay?"

"Eh heh. . . what're you talking about?"

"You don't have to tell me. I'm not gonna force you or something."

Instead of answering the question, Mion stood abruptly and walked around the table to the oven. She bent over to take a peek at the heating chicken, deciding that it was good enough to eat at that point. She flipped the oven light off and then closed all the dials down, knobs twisting with loud plastic clacks. Retrieving a set of oven mitts hanging off a ring on the bottom of the spice rack, she pulled the door open and reached in to lift their dinner out. It had only been in there for a few minutes so they weren't all that hot, but Mion didn't really care at that point.

She rested the pan atop the stove and then closed the oven door, removing her gloves and placing them back from where she'd gotten them. Without delay she plucked one of the bamboo skewers off the pile and pulled a meaty chunk of chicken wing into her mouth. As she did, she let out of a slow, pleasant sigh. "Mmmm, these are really really good, Kei-chan. Thanks for making them."

Keiichi just looked at her incredulously. Eventually he simply said, "I slaved all day."

". . . It's just been. . . stuff, you know? Family things. A lot's been going on."

Keiichi scrambled back to the topic she'd dropped just as fast as she brought it back up. He stood and walked over beside her, picking up a skewer for himself. "Right. Well, if you ever feel I can do anything for you, let me know, alright? I mean I'm not great at solving problems, but I can talk your ear off if you need a distraction or something."

"Ain't that the truth."

"If -" Keiichi paused, killing the thought, and bit into the yakitori. "This is still cold."

"Meh. I like it like this."

He sighed. "Well I'll be around if you need me."

". . . Thanks. I'll remember that."

Mion moved as he began to flip the dials of the oven back on again, restarting the process that she'd halted. As he did Mion wandered over to the window on the far side of the kitchen, munching distractedly. She stared at the dark mirror for a long moment, taking in the countenance of herself in a finely honed costume that perfectly represented her high ideals that failed miserably. Her fingers crushed tensely against the bamboo, and she couldn't stand the sight of the uniform anymore. She reached out to the lock and flipped it open, pulling the window inward.

The planet of an evening gale rushed to meet the music. Millions of voices landing in a blank and calamitous unison walked just before her, like some mystical warp into a new universe. The cool of the night rushed to her hot and reddened face, caressing in a thin mist of hands. Her free hand reached up to her hair, fingers jamming down in the finely coiled braid, and pulled away at the knots. After a moment of struggle, her hair fell loose, pooling around her shoulders and back, further marring the costume she'd suddenly come to loathe.

She looked vacantly into the woods behind Keiichi's house, trees and paths obscured by the lay of midsummer shadows and rain. From the corner of her eye, against the tiny reflection of the opened window, she caught Keiichi staring at her from behind her back. She turned to him. "What?"

Keiichi blinked, turning his attention back to the oven. "Oh. . . nothing."

Mion rolled her eyes. "C'mon now."

Keiichi shrugged. "Just think you look better that way."

Mion didn't blush. She just looked back out the window. ". . . Thanks."

"You asked."

"True. I did." She pulled the last piece of chicken off the skewer with her teeth, moving to the sill to rest her palms on its wet surface. Stray droplets fell on her hands, and she felt her throat grow heavy. "That air. . . the rain smells so nice." Somewhere in the world behind her were her two closest friends. All she could do for them was stand here, at the window of a screaming and ceaseless world, and keep watch. Her eyes clouded as thunder rolled onward, echoing above the music for the duration of its brief existence. "I'm glad we stayed here. I hope Rena-chan is okay."

Keiichi nodded, watching the light in the oven.

Mion looked back at him and spoke softly. ". . . Kei-chan. I hope I don't wreck anything by. . . I hope it's okay that I say this. But. . . thanks."

He looked over at her. "Of course it's okay."

"You're. . . very special to me. You're the best friend I've ever had. I hope that it's okay that you know that."

Keiichi wasn't immediately certain how to react to that. "Yeah. . ." His hands wrung together for a moment, but then he smiled and looked back at the oven, unable to keep eye contact with her for the time being. "You too. Everything is better when you're around."

For a second time Rena entered the room, holding her wrist lightly. She stood there for a long moment without saying anything, simply looking back and forth between the two of them. Mion noticed her entrance and turned, regarding from the swollen cheeks and reddened eyes that Rena had clearly been crying. The two of them shared eye contact across a brief and fragile span, and Mion then wordlessly walked over and pulled Rena into a very tight hug. Rena's arms hung limply at her sides, unable to return the embrace.

"I'm sorry I made you do this," Mion whispered.

Keiichi turned and leaned back against the counter, watching them carefully.

Rena separated from Mion, shaking her head. She looked back and forth between both of her friends. "I'm - I'm really sorry you guys. I'm acting like such a child."

Keiichi shrugged. "What're you talking about? We're all kids here. Stupid kids dressed like anime spacemen."

Mion smiled. "That's right! Maturity is to be left at the door tonight."

Keiichi watched with all the scrutiny he could possibly muster, trying to somehow take the limitations of his human form and jump beyond the borders encasing Rena - he did not need to ruminate on the impossible for very long, as he saw within moments as Rena's face pulled into a smile anyway and he was filled with the knowledge that he had been _right_. It was the most torturous of sensations to feel, to believe one had failed those that mattered most. But Keiichi knew that Mion would always be safe from that harm - Mion could never fail Rena. He hoped she realized that.

Rena looked back to Keiichi. "Good!" She noticed the empty skewer in Mion's hand, then peering at the oven light behind Keiichi. ". . . No fair, you started cooking without me. I had some neat ideas we could have used. I know how to make a nice pepper sauce for yakitori really quick."

Mion sighed dramatically. "Once again, Kei-chan, you have failed us miserably."

Rena walked over and knelt down to look into the oven. "It smells sooooooo good."

Keiichi grinned. "Well, since I went to all this trouble, you'd damn well better eat it! So help yourself."

Mion jerked her thumb toward the other room. "Well if you two are going to fiddle with those for a bit, I'm going to go to the bathroom."

"Alright," Keiichi said. "You know where to find us."

Rena stood beside Keiichi as Mion left the room. Now having more of the greater picture, even if it was incomplete and fractured, Keiichi could easily understand most of the wounds that tore about Rena - physical or otherwise. He was about to open the fridge to find her something to drink when he remembered that she hadn't been interested. Instead he pulled the door open and withdrew a can of soda and handed it to her, which she accepted gratefully.

Her fingers coiled around the chilled aluminum. ". . . Keiichi-kun."

He looked over at her. "Hm? Yeah?"

She met his gaze briefly, moving to speak, but then bit her lip and looked back down at the oven. "Um. . ."

"It's alright. I'm not upset with you or anything."

"Thanks."

"The party was probably going to suck anyway," he said, leaning back against the counter.

She nodded. The oven light hummed, music filtering through the house in a mountainous horn, but it was quiet for a time.

In the dark, with rain all around them, what they became could have been anything.

Keiichi looked up at the ceiling. "We've got a few extra futons. Did you want to stay here tonight?"

". . . Yeah. Thank you."

"Okay," he said, not asking why.

_It doesn't feel so bad now._


	6. all out of queens, all into fire

_Profuse apologies for the long delay. Unfortunately my hard-drive collapsed, taking with it all my writing. I had three stories all essentially completed when this happened (and I really liked one of those in particular - argh), so it kind of killed my will to write for a little while. But here we are again anyway. I hope to have the next installment out with greater expedience. Thanks to everyone that has been supportive thus far. I really appreciate it. :)_

**all out of queens, all into fire**

_and the language you speak is the words that I lack_

Mion stood ingested by the puffy white of a stitched and threaded polar bear, sliding inside the fabric from the oily touch of her own sweat. A humid morning under a slate-gray sky, burning down through the airy fog of an Okinomiya summer. For what it was worth, the tiny splits in the costume's curved ears allowed for some ventilation, but at this rate, she was already despairing over the oncoming afternoon. Even the laminated card that dangled around her neck suspended by a braided loop of colored string was beginning to feel like an anchor, soon to pull her down beneath the melting waves of a smothered sun onto the unforgiving pavement. Why did she take this job again?

"Kind of. . . stalky for a bear, don't you think?"

"Yeah. Way too tall. Not cute at all."

Turning, Mion raised a paw in greetings to a pair of teenage girls appraising her from behind, peering and judging. A booklet of coupons tucked under her other arm rustled from the movement. Her voice spoke out in a dull muffle through the costume's closed head. "Welcome to Onifuda's Gaming Center. School is out, and gaming time is here. We have all of the newest and most exciting video games. As well as many platform arcade experiences. Ask me about our sequence-play coupon magazine, only available for a limited time."

"Ch," one of the girls snorted. "Pass. People spend money on these? What a weak past-time."

One of the benefits to the costume was that the girl couldn't see the middle finger Mion was extending to her inside the fluffy paw.

Mion heaved an exaggerated sigh as the pair moved on down the street, muttering and giggling at her expense. A soft glow refracting off the row of parked cars across the street arced like barnacled crusts of silver, a disconnected sequence that only seemed to pinch the nerves already sore in her head. A mind trip-hammered by gentle furry impacts. It wasn't like she was in a crisis or anything, or that there was some deadline of sorts dangling before her. She felt like an idiot, frankly. There had to have been countless places in that end of Okinomiya that were hiring, and she had to go and land herself a position where being demeaned and sneered upon by the local populace was more or less the whole description.

Cars drove by in a concrete whisper. She tried to reach an itch on her back and failed. So this was going to be her summer vacation, huh?

A hand fell onto her shoulder and she turned, coming face to face with the bespectacled Toru Onifuda, her employer. He tapped a pen against the clipboard he held. "Sonozaki-san, I appreciate the effort, but this is a fast-paced business built off of visual and audio excitement. You need to attack this campaign with more enthusiasm."

Mion nodded sheepishly. "Um, heh heh - okay. Sorry." She quickly spun around and appraised the nearby populace, searching gaze lashed out to locate and capture. A disgruntled boy was walking in their direction, kicking at his feet. Mion trotted over to him, and spread her arms out cheerfully, saying, "Hello there, sir! And welcome to Onifuda's Gaming Center! Might I interest you in a free coupon booklet?"

He glared at her. "Bite me, harpy. Get a life."

"Jesus, you little brat!" she hissed, immediately forgetting where she was and what she was doing. "I'll kill you!"

The tiny clacks of the pen against the board found her ears. "Sonozaki-san, please don't verbally abuse our most frequent demographic."

Mion withdrew the clubbed fist she'd already wound back and turned her attention back to Toru. "Did you even hear what that eel just said to me?"

"I'd advise you to develop a thick skin regarding customer opinion as expediently as possible. That kind of thing is going to be very common."

"I see," she said, deflating. She could her the boy snickering as he walked by her. She hoped the next time he crossed the street he would find himself sandwiched in a head-on collision between 18-wheelers. "Sorry about that."

Toru adjusted his glasses. "Most people have the intrinsic urge to play games, but some people require a lot of convincing to indulge. That is what I need you to be doing for me - convincing them to drop their rationalizations."

"I didn't realize being a mascot-slash-greeter would have such metaphysical responsibilities."

"That's just business. With your upbringing, I'm sure you understand. It's all beneath the writing."

"Yes sir."

"Keep at it, then. But remember: enthusiasm, and excitement."

Mion offered a pawed salute as means of received encouragement. "Yes sir!"

As Toru brushed his way back inside the arcade, Mion stood there in solemn contemplation. If anything, over the course of the morning and the previous day, she'd begun to rapidly develop an empathetic heartstring for all mascots the world over. She had to admit to being outright shocked at how blunt and disrespectful people were, thumbing their noses at her pitiful lot, tethered to the wasted slough of a buffoon's existence. Well maybe not quite that melodramatic, but it was pretty infuriating being run through with the social spear every time she attempted to initiate pleasant conversation.

She'd heard worse, of course. She considered herself a fairly thick-skinned person, but that was only in circumstances where she was allowed reprisal. To roll over and submit to anonymous critical blather from people she didn't even know. . . and to convince them of something she couldn't care less about? At least Shion had the benefit of wearing a cute dress while working _indoors_. She was also entirely likely to escape unscathed in terms of job security if she were to slam a tray into an unruly customer's face. All Mion had to counter with the deathly ballistics of big hugs and rapid-expire coupons.

She sighed. Some enthusiasm.

"Excuse me, madam, I can't help but notice that you look absolutely hilarious."

"Who-" Mion turned, her entire posture wilting as she met eyes with her inquirer. The fact he knew it was her even with the head on. . . "Oh for God's sake."

"I am interested in hearing of the nature of this business establishment."

Mion waved a dismissive paw. "Kei-chan, I'm kind of occupied at the moment. So buzz off."

Keiichi gave her a blank look from the shade of a very bizarre hat. "Who is this 'Kei-chan' of which you speak? I am Olzig Tomaszewski, of the great Polish House Tomaszewski, curators of the green expanse, cultivators of the beautiful and bountiful avenue of. . . uh. . . Grass Farms of. . . Tomaszewskiville, as is the style from where I hail. I come to this country seeking fame, adventure, and Donkey Kong."

". . . You're an idiot. Seriously, I'm. . ." Mion paused. ". . . is that a fake mustache?"

It took only a moment for his whole get-up to register after that. What was meant to be a hat was in fact a minuscule t-shirt that had been shrunk and then colored (dyed, specifically, Mion recalled as the memory leapt back to her) a dull pink; silky blond curls fell outward from beneath and pooled about his shoulders, the wig framing his face in what was quite possibly the most bizarre thing she'd ever seen him put on. And this was including Christmas-themed zombie lingerie. With the knowledge of what his head-wear actually was came the frosty, circling pressure of imminent danger - she knew full well that this was going to get very ugly, very quickly.

Keiichi glared at her from underneath everything, speaking in a slurred exaggeration of a foreign accent. "How terribly rude of you to insult the well-groomed heritage of Tomaszewski mustachioed descent to which I belong! I, Olzig, of the great Swedish House Tomaszewski!"

Mion paused, and then laughed in spite of herself. "Oh, I don't even know where to begin to start poking at. Now take a hike, before you wind up offending someone."

"Olzig demands coupons."

"Private party, Olzig! Amscray!"

"Alright, _fine_. I'm not really Olzig, of the great Norwegian House Tomaszewski. I'm actually. . . " Keiichi took a moment to look up and down the street, conspiratorially combing their surroundings. After which he took a fistful of the wig into his hands and yanked, revealing a second and even more disconcerting headpiece underneath. Mion was met with the sight of a poorly crafted polystyrene dome lined with silicone resin ends and rubber tendrils wiggling about. "A horrible mutant alien space robot! SPACE HAS A TERRIBLE POWER."

Mion's hands yanked roughly at the large bear-head smothering her, pulling her face free from the costume as she tried to suppress her laughter and failed. Her hair hung about her forehead and cheeks in thick lines of darkened green, and she knew her face must have been alight in a color normally reserved for spherical vegetables. She couldn't help it. She just shook her head, costume top in hands, wondering where the hell he found that monstrosity. "Hey now, you are, without comparison, the _dumbest _person I have ever met."

Keiichi grinned, gray plastic stalks twitching atop his head. "I have you to thank for that, you know. So single me out at your own peril. A year ago I wouldn't be caught dead in public like this. I mean. . . it's still a little embarrassing, but. . . And besides, you seem to find it pretty amusing."

Mion went to touch at the material of the headpiece, but stopped when she remembered her then-restrained hands. "Is that why you came here? For a few yucks at my expense?"

"Absolutely," he said, entirely serious. "I just had to see it for myself, you know? You giggling in polar bear pajamas in broad daylight."

She rolled her eyes. "And how did you find out I was working here?"

Keiichi flashed a cryptic smile. "Oh, I just used my vast labyrinth of connections."

"Shion told you," she concluded darkly. "Didn't she."

"Oh yeah."

Mion sighed. "She seems obsessed with ruining my life when it comes to you."

"That's what sisters are for? Oh yeah! I almost forgot."

"Now what?"

Keiichi reached up and yanked the weird dome off of his head and then shook as he ran his fingers through his hair to alleviate its matted clumps. He swung his bag around after and deposited both 'wigs' into its shifting mass, before quickly pulling out a small camera and aiming it directly at Mion's face. Before Mion could even think to protest or jump out of the way or punch him in the face the light snapped out at her, mechanical pins clacking as the image was flash-burned into print.

She glared at him. "Hey!"

Keiichi tapped his finger against the device. "Rena made me promise to do that. She had that evil glint, so, you know. . . couldn't really say no. I enjoy the prospect of continued existence too much for that."

Mion began to unzip the fastening along her wrist. "So not just you, but Shion told _everyone _about my job here? I just started yesterday! Augh!"

"No no," he assured her quickly. "She just told me. _I_ told everyone else."

A knot of silver loosened along her hand and she pulled back on the glove, its symmetry moving apart with the tear of velcro. She took the opportunity to rub at her swollen and itchy neck while giving out tired little breaths. "Why am I not surprised. . . Nice hat, by the way. I especially liked the first one."

Keiichi laughed. "Wasn't it great? I should be thanking you. It's broadened my approach to head-wear in many ways. I like how you can only make _ugly_ things."

Mion's hand stilled behind her head. Her eyes narrowed. "**Excuse** me?"

Keiichi returned the camera to his satchel, then held out his hand in askance. "Hey Lady, am I going to be getting a coupon booklet at any point?"

Mion crossed her arms. "Well that depends, can you go fuck yourself?"

"Oh come on, now!"

Mion blinked. "Huh?"

Both Keiichi and Mion turned to find a middle-aged woman standing at the entrance to the arcade, beneath the awning hanging over the sidewalk. In both her hands were the small fingers of her young children, both of whom were staring up at Mion with a kind of stunned awe. Mion took in a sharp breath.

The woman was glaring heavily at Mion. "I have kids! Children! They're standing right here with me! That type of language is completely inappropriate and discourteous. This is a public sidewalk. Have a little consideration for the other people that use it, huh? Jeez. And you work here? Do they approve of that? You should be ashamed."

Mion began to panic. She held the bear-head tightly in both hands and began to bow in frantic apology. "I- I- I'm so sorry! I don't normally talk like- um, I'm really- please, I'm sorry. That just slipped out. You're right, I shouldn't have said that."

"Man, you should hear her behind closed doors," Keiichi offered helpfully. "This one time she stubbed her toe and I thought my ears were going to turn into coal and fall off."

A dervish of cute and stuffy feet spun around in mechanical reaction, Mion's whipcord body leaning into the kick, her over-sized and floppy paws spinning in a martial roundhouse. There was a pathetic noise akin to dropped pillows as her attack landed on his thigh and was entirely blunted by the costume. It was so much of a gut reaction that she didn't even realize until after she'd gone into attack-mode that she'd only further aggravated an already sore, weeping wound. Adrenaline was drowned immediately in forming realization that she was probably throwing her job away at that very moment, in those very seconds.

Keiichi dropped to one knee, hands clenched atop his impacted limb. "Oh God, the muscular contusions! I'm going to be laid out in disability for weeks! This is cruelty by animals! In public! Someone call the feds! Or at least roach control!"

Mion heard the children laughing from behind her.

". . . You're right," the woman said after a moment. "I apologize, young lady. It clearly is all his fault. Grow up, young man. You aren't being funny - just obnoxious."

Mion swallowed heavily, turning back to the trio and bowing once again. "Thanks. But you're right, I shouldn't have said that anyway."

Relatively mollified, the woman tugged lightly at her children's hands and led them inside the arcade, casting a disapproving glance at both of them before vanishing behind the violet drapes lulling down from the doorway. For Mion, it was so easy to allow herself to be swept up in Keiichi's company; his charisma and optimism were so infectious, brushing all dust of time and place away with a warm friendly rinse, that she almost entirely forgot where she was and what she was doing. She turned to see him standing up straight, injury-free, flipping through a small booklet.

Mion let out a small breath. "Okay seriously, Kei-chan, I think you should get going now. I'll give you a call when I get off work, okay?" She took a second glance at the paper he was leafing through in his hands, her eyes then falling to the wedge in her arm. "Where are my. . . What is _with_ you today? Give me those!"

Keiichi turned his body so she couldn't wrestle the coupons he'd swiped away from him. "With 'me'? I haven't even gotten started! I had Satoko draft me up a huge list of things I have yet to employ! I _liked_ that shirt, damn it!"

Mion cleared her throat and took a brief look around before speaking again. "Sir, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to confiscate the coupon booklet I 'gave' to you as it has become apparent that you are an insufferable jackass."

Keiichi winked. "Cool your thrusters, babycakes."

"Would you stop trying to make Macross dialogue into a catchphrase already?"

"The best part is that I can say that sort of thing to anyone and get a blank stare, but you know _exactly_ what I'm talking about. So don't act all high and mighty, Dame Mascot."

Mion shook her head. "I'm never going to get people to go inside if I have to stand here and yell at you all day, as entertaining as that is. Please."

"So you just need to sell things?" he asked, closing the booklet with an enthusiastic clap. "I can help with that."

"Please don't."

"Why not? I got time to kill. And you have to admit, I'm pretty good at that sort of thing."

". . . Granted, but -" Fingers clenched into fists inside claws. He'd already begun to make his way down the street. "Can't you sit still for two seconds? Do you have to run around everywhere all the time like a little kid?"

He wasn't listening. Instead he jogged over to a young man that was leaning against the sandy yellow of the adjacent building. He seemed to be very fascinated with his fingers, pressing their tips against each other and concentrating with the whole of his attention.

Keiichi thrust the coupon booklet into his face. "Hey buddy, you into this sort of thing?"

"Walkin' here."

Keiichi eyed him carefully. "Um, standing you mean? You there? Hello? Hey!"

The young man slowly blinked almond, dilated eyes at Keiichi as he lifted his head. "Whoa. Ease up, man - you're tarnishing my LSD voyage. . ."

"You - um - yikes. Are you serious?"

A hand shot out, smacking the booklet out of Keiichi's hands before he returned his attention to his own fingers. "Slag off, friend. These colors are mine alone. I'm walking this acid world. You are too dirty for this bath. You don't have the right to judge me, man!"

As Keiichi bent down to pick the booklet back up, he nearly found himself at a complete loss for words. Eventually he stumbled a few out as he took a step back. ". . . It's not even noon yet, and you're actually walking around- standing- um- egh. Okay, whatever. Go forth and fail to multiply." He turned and walked back over to Mion, shaking his head. He handed the coupons back to her outstretched and expectant paw. "This town is full of weirdos."

"Look who's talking. . ." she muttered.

Keiichi took the moment to stretch, smiling at her. "Okay, I had my fun. For now."

"Finally," she replied, without disdain.

"It's pretty weird, though. I mean I came here with the intent of making your day a bit zany, but looks like I probably didn't even need to do anything. Does everyone around here have a story?"

Mion shrugged. "Yeah. Well what do you expect from the pre-lunch Tuesday crowd in this end of town? Nothing but time."

The laugh was written all over his face. "You're like completely red. So either you're getting pretty hot in that thing, or you're just _really_ flustered."

"Probably both," she admitted.

Keiichi grinned, raising a fist into the air in celebration. "Then my mission here is accomplished. I can save some of this stuff for another time."

"I just love how hanging around you means I have to think on my toes all the time. No rest for the wicked, I guess." She rolled her neck with a tired sigh, but found herself smiling at him all the same. "Anyway. I get off at five, so maybe come by then and we can go shopping or something. And thanks for the laughs."

Keiichi puffed his chest outward in self-importance. "That's what I'm here for!"

"Ahem."

Mion spun about. "Onifuda-san!"

_Clack, clack, clack. _Toru stood beneath the awning once again, peering at Mion through eyes teeming with reproach; pen tapping away at the clipboard, standing aloof like a stalk in a quiet vineyard.

Keiichi snorted. "Well this one is a lost cause. Clearly this man is not of the correct demographic."

Mion hissed through slammed teeth. "That is my _boss_, dummy! Shut up!"

Toru cleared his throat. "'Was' being the operable term, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, Sonozaki-san, but I don't believe this is going to work out."

Mion blinked. "Wait, what?"

"It seems this is not a correct fit. I hope you understand."

The slow fear from earlier pressed itself against her thoughts. "You're firing me?"

Keiichi waved his hands, gaze melding into fury. "Whoa whoa whoa, what the hell?"

Toru gestured in Mion's direction with his unoccupied hand. "I've received several complaints in the last few minutes about how you speak to the customers, as well as some mention of questionable language. Further, Onifuda Gaming Center is a family establishment built on the principles of fun and respect, and I cannot abide the presence of individuals such as this young man, creating discord and disruption. And from what I have observed and been told, you seem to be on close terms, so it would be logical to assume that your presence would attract his kind, which is business I am not interested in."

Keiichi shook his head in disbelief. "Seriously, that woman actually went inside to complain? Aren't there slightly more useful things to crusade righteously for?" The latter of Toru's points punctured through him, anger swelling further. "Hey! My 'kind'? What kind of shot is that?"

Mion's hands curled softly inside her oversized paws, and she spoke in a quiet, disbelieving voice. ". . . You're really firing me because of him?"

"Among other things, but yes - that mostly."

"Okay, hold on," Keiichi said, stepping back from the threshold of the entrance. "That's not necessary. I won't ever come by here again, okay? I promise. Don't fire her."

Toru shook his head, making a few concise pen strokes across the paper before him. "The decision has been made."

Mion sighed. "So that's how it is, huh."

Keiichi wasn't about to drop it. "Seriously, step back here. Be reasonable, okay? I'm sorry I interfered here. Mion is amazing at whatever you throw at her, you'd be making a _huge_ mistake to toss that aside."

It was just like him, Mion mused, to flail against all restraints - attempting to ameliorate a situation beyond repair. Really, Mr. Onifuda had _no _idea what kind of Pandora's box he had thrown open, inciting Keiichi's sense of morality into its luminous, razor-winged life. But all that was lost in the flow of embarrassment, of being fired in _front _of Keiichi; of being fired _because _of Keiichi. Little spurts of shame wove about, swimming outward like the aching sting of a rotten tooth.

"Sir," Toru answered, his patience being stretched by Keiichi's mere presence, "this conversation is concluded. Now if you could please extricate yourself from the premises in an orderly fashion."

Keiichi laughed bitterly. "Nobody fires Mion! She quits! This whole place is so beneath her, it's downright sickening!"

Mion spoke out sharply. "You want to stop speaking for me, please? This hole is deep enough already."

Keiichi made no movement to speak out against Mion's wishes, but he made no movement to leave, either. Until Toru pointedly stretched his wrist out, making a blunt act of observing his watch tick the seconds by.

"You have to be kidding me," Keiichi muttered in a voice nearly hoarse with anger. "Are you giving me the 'I'm above you people' routine? Obviously you aren't above anything, if you can't even see what an amazing asset you're just tossing aside. Moron."

"Kei-chan, stop."

"Now would be nice," Toru said.

"So that's how it is, eh? Fine. I'll show you zany," Keiichi declared, Mion's face immediately draining of color in realization that Keiichi's buttons had just been thoughtlessly pounded down. He bluntly pushed his way beyond Toru, slapping the hanging velvet draping the doorway, and stuck his head into the arcade proper. He slammed his fist on a nearby machine with a loud bang, causing the people inside to look in his direction. "HEY! YEAH! ALL YOU PEOPLE! BETTER BE ON THE LOOKOUT! FATHERS, LOCK UP YOUR SONS, BECAUSE THIS CREEPY OLD SLEEZEBASKET IS INTO LITTLE BOYS!"

Mion looked horrified. "**KEI-CHAN**!"

"Time's up," Toru said, grabbing Keiichi by the elbow and pulling him back outside onto the street. "Leave now, or I will personally dislocate your face."

Keiichi noticed the _Are you effing crazy? _look Mion was giving him, and made an effort to switch tactics. "Alright, so maybe I went a bit far with that last one. But let's calm down here and think rationally. Okay? Just because I'm kind of rude sometimes doesn't mean you have to fire Mion. That's just retarded. Well played, King Clip-On Tie. I hope you're happy with all the _nothing _you've accomplished in life, you worthless piece of shi-"

Toru turned to the entrance. "I'm calling the cops."

Keiichi spun around and began walking expediently in the opposing direction. "Yeahokayleavingnow."

Mion was left standing there for a moment in bewilderment of what just happened. It had all whirled into motion in the same cyclonic happenstance that all things involving Keiichi Maebara did, but here she had been paralyzed by inhibitions she knew herself to not normally possess. She'd just been fired. Even if the job was the pits, it wasn't a pleasant feeling. All she had to do was stand around in a stuffed animal costume all day, and someone had the nerve to tell her that she wasn't good enough for that? That she wasn't _necessary_? She barely even had a chance to prove herself.

And as depressing as that was - why did she feel like laughing?

She sighed around the feel of cotton soaking in her cheeks and trudged into the arcade after Toru. She found him waiting on the other side of the curtain staring at the phone resting against the wall in deep contemplation. Mion had figured that he had mostly used the police as an excuse to drive Keiichi out, but the idea that he was actually going to bring in the Ooishi brigade after one of her own club members filled her with the surge of maternal sacrifice that she had grown wholly accustomed to. She ripped the velcro of her pawed hand in a frenzied tear and quickly placed her hand atop the receiver so Toru could not lift it from its cradle.

He looked at her dispassionately.

Mion swallowed, abashed. "He's. . . he doesn't mean any disrespect. He just gets worked up about things when he considers something wrong. Forgive him."

He looked at her hand and eventually nodded. "Mm."

Mion let out a relieved breath, extricating her hand. "Well, I'm sorry."

"So am I."

"No no," she continued, suddenly filled with a rebellious vigor. She hated this job, and she hated this man. Why hold back at that point? "I'm not sorry if you're offended. That's not my problem. I'm sorry that you don't find it all as funny as I do."

Toru shook his head, his pen clacking once again against the clipboard. "Sonozaki-san, perhaps it would be best if you completed your shift now and went home, instead of waiting until five o'clock."

"Alright. I understand," she acquiesed. She reached up to remove the laminated card swinging from her neck, her pass indicating employment, holding it out to him like a pendant. "Here's the card thingy."

"Thank you," he said, taking it from her. Without a word he turned and walked over towards his office across the arcade.

Mion trudged off to the staff room, trying to sort through her feelings. She stepped by a slightly older girl as she walked through the doorway and was granted a brief, sympathetic look. Mion didn't even know her name. Like it mattered. She trudged through the break room, walking by a boy sitting at the table munching on a cinnamon roll, not even bothering to acknowledge him. She reached into the closet where her pants and shirt were hanging, pulling them off the rack with the thin coppery hanger, pushing her way into the bathroom and closing the door behind her. A bulb above the mirror flickered to a murky golden life. A fat, plastic firefly.

She wanted to trash the whole room.

It was a brief and vile whisper, a tumor of thought expanding through the angry recesses that spat in her mind like a dark, fiery griddle. She bit her lip and violently pushed the urge down, beginning to wiggle her way out of the costume. The idea of writing a few curse words across the mirror at the very least was pretty tantalizing, but she scolded herself, knowing it to be a bit more juvenile than she considered herself to be. As the sticky, woolen outfit billowed around her, she could practically feel relief rushing in through her oxygen-starved pores.

So she was fired. Big deal. It happened all the time to a lot of people. And she only took this job on a whim in the first place. The world wasn't about to teeter off its axis and careen into the nearest galactic mass. She stepped out of the furry skin pooled at her feet and appraised herself in the mirror, searching herself for the immovable stone she knew others saw her as. A sweat-laden, tired, despondent girl encompassed the glass. Okay. So maybe she couldn't drop the sense of failure immediately on command simply because she appealed to the right side of her brain with the left.

She started laughing. She didn't know why, but she did.

Mion quickly pulled her jeans on and slid her arms through her yellow t-shirt. She picked up the costume off the dirt of the bathroom floor and pushed her way back into the break room. By now the boy at the table was watching her with curiosity, but she still couldn't be bothered to pay him any mind. Instead she gave an aloof twist of her wrist, letting fly the lumpy costume so it slid onto the table. She grabbed her backpack that had been hanging up next to her clothes and slung it over her shoulder.

They probably wouldn't even pay her for the first day.

No way in hell she was going to make time to say goodbye to anyone. She decided to leave through the back entrance. A final, desperate plea to at least tip the coffee pot over or something clattered around her imagination, spines tapping with a melody forged from years of hanging around kids that loved pranks, but she smothered that like those before it and made her way down the long hall at the back of the breakroom. She trotted up a few steps in what was almost total darkness, bulbs in weathered sockets long since singed and useless, and then roughly pushed the double doors open leading to the back alley.

Keiichi stood there, looking away from her, watching the other end of the alley to see if police were actually going to be summoned for his capture.

This was an outlet much easier to loose herself upon.

Mion swung her other arm through her backpack and then took a running charge at him, slamming into him from behind, nearly toppling them both over onto the pavement. A goofy _unf_ escaped him as he recoiled like he'd been struck between the shoulder-blades with the stubbed end of a pool cue.

She caught him a stranglehold. "Kei-chaaaaaaaaan. . . !"

Keiichi shook frantically in her grip. "Okay that is- OW!"

Mion loosened her hold, but didn't release him entirely. "You'd better believe it's Ow! Why'd you have to go and do that, you jerk? You ruined everything! What do you have to say for yourself?"

Keiichi wiggled so he could turn his head around to look at her. ". . . Nipah?"

Her face flopped down, forehead pressing against his shoulder as she burst into laughter. After which she let go of his neck and gave his back a hard push. "That was probably the only thing you could have said to - ahh. Come on. I needed that job. There were things I wanted to buy. _Things!_" She huffed at him as he turned to face her. "You know those cute little outfits I have you trot around in? Yeah. They don't buy themselves."

Keiichi straightened and then bowed in sincere apology. "Mion, I'm so sorry. Please believe me. I feel so stupid. I really didn't mean to wreck everything for you."

She sighed. "I know. And. . . yeah, I won't lie about it. That job sucked anyway. I figure if you hadn't driven me crazy, the god-awful sound on the Galaxian machine would have. Deeeeeeewwwwwn! Deeeeeeeewwwnnn! Boom!" Her hand swept up to brush a few sweaty locks from her forehead, thinking back to how he'd dove headlong into her defense. "And I guess you made up for it."

His eyes swept to both ends of the alley. "He didn't really call the cops, did he?"

"Nah," she said, smiling as his entire posture seemed to elate. "But I wouldn't set foot in there ever again if I were you. But thanks for sticking up for me anyway. . . I don't know whether I should clock you or hug you."

"I'm really sorry. I didn't mean for all that to happen."

"It's okay. At least it'll be an interesting memory, I guess. You ass." She laughed sadly, again caught between failure and humor. "Man. . ."

Keiichi tapped the bag at his side which still housed the 'hats' he'd worn earlier. "That was supposed to be payback for the other day."

"Yeah, I gathered." Mion looked at her watch. "Second day, before lunch. That's just sad. I'm depressed."

"It went way too far," he told her, fidgeting uncomfortably. "I only wanted to embarrass you and maybe scar you emotionally. A little. At most."

"What am I ever going to do with you? You're a lost cause." She took a breath, looking up into the dull morning sky. "'Nipah'. That's hilarious. We've trained you well, I guess."

Keiichi chucked a thumb over his shoulder. "Let me make it up to you. Let's go get something to eat."

Mion looked at him in surprise. "Right now?"

He shrugged. "Well, if you're not hungry, we don't have to."

"No, I am, kinda," she told him, the machinery of her thoughts already beginning to run beta sequences as to how she would exact revenge upon him. "Okay. Let's do that."

Keiichi pulled his wallet out of his bag. "You pick the place. I'm buying."

"You're goddamn right you're buying. So. . ." She stretched her hand flat above her brow, pretending to peer about in all directions, in spite of the fact they were walled in on all sides by the brickwork of commercial architecture. "Where's the most expensive place in walking distance?"

Keiichi coughed. "Uh. . . Chateau de Cup Ramen?"

Mion grinned, pointing at the sky. "Six-thousand-yen sushi baikingu it is!"

He sighed, shrugging helplessly. "You're the boss."

Mion laughed at him. "Gyudon is fine."

"I knew you'd see things my way," he approved.

The two of them turned and fell into step beside one another as they made their way out of the alley and onto the street. Mion pointed in the northeastern direction to where traffic merged at a small intersection. "There's a beef bowl not too far from here. I haven't been there since they reacquired ownership of that lot. There was this pet shop there for a couple of weeks a year or so ago. Terrible, terrible memories of that place."

She shuddered heavily.

Keiichi shook his head. "I don't think I even want to know."

"You don't. It's a messy and sordid past of agony and shame." Mion paused in her steps so she could move to Keiichi's other side closer to the street as they walked by the young man on acid from earlier, who still appeared to be as captivated by his fingers as ever. She didn't really perceive him as dangerous, but still, no sense putting herself in the line of fire. As she moved she noticed that Keiichi held a small index card in his left hand, her recollection unearthing something he'd mentioned earlier. "So is that the 'Satoko List'?"

"Hm?" He looked down at the small card. "Yeah."

Mion's hand shot out, ripping it from his grasp. "Gimme that!"

"Hey!"

She giggled as she took a few bounding steps away from him so he couldn't retrieve it before coming to an abrupt halt so she could read over what he'd had in store for her. "Let's see now. . . Oh, the hell is this? 'Don't worry Keiichi, we'll find a way to help Satoko enjoy pumpkin some day. Even though she wasn't too fond of these, I was happy that you liked them so much! So please try this one out when you have the time. 1 lb kabocha, seeds removed, peeled, cut into small chunks; 1/2 onion, finely chopped; 3 Tbsp heavy cream; 2 oz. natural chunk cheese, cut into small cubes' . . ."

Mion looked over at him through narrowed eyes. "Some list of deviances here, Kei-chan. I'd say this almost looks like Rika-chan's kabocha korokke recipe."

"Those things are freaking delicious!" he agreed.

She handed the card back to him, realizing she'd been duped. "Though not especially frightening. I lose again." Clockwork resounded, everything revolving into place. She halted, feeling even more the fool. "Wait. So this means. . ."

Keiichi started laughing. "Hah hah! Yep. I didn't tell anyone about you working here."

"But- but- the camera!"

He winked at her. "That's for when I _do_ tell Rena about it. Need to plan ahead, you know? She'd be pretty upset if I didn't take that into consideration."

"Ugh. . . you and your entrapments. Totally disproportionate."

"Well that's why they say that vengeance is supposed to be returned sevenfold, right? Maybe next time you'll think about what will follow when you shrink my favorite shirt and ruin it with food coloring."

"Oh think I shall," she uttered, venom nearly dripping in corporeal droplets. "And then do something twice as mean instead."

He huffed, shaking his finger at her. "You can't take revenge on someone who took revenge on you! It's called wiping the slate clean. We're back to zero-sum now. No winners, and no losers."

Mion gave him a hard shove towards the nearest building. "You got me canned! I don't care if it _was_ a reprisal - your days are numbered, little man."

Keiichi stumbled, but rallied quickly. "Friends don't let friends intentionally mislaunder their clothing out of spite."

She crossed her arms hautily. "Oh is that so."

"Mhm. It's all encoded in the big book of rules in the sky. All of life is a superscription of data!"

For not the first time, and certainly not the last since she'd met him, she found herself without a suitable reply to a totally bizarre and outlandish observation on his behalf. ". . . You say some of the _weirdest _things," was the best she could come up with on such short notice. They continued onward towards the approaching traffic lights, and Mion found herself peering over her shoulder to the spot where not ten minutes ago she'd been standing in employment. She looked over at him. "So I noticed something back there. You're pretty. . . territorial."

"You think so?"

Mion gave him an awkward look. "Do you want to me tell you everything you just said and did to jog your memory?"

He appeared as if he was constructing some kind of clever retort, but eventually he just shrugged and allowed the point to stand. "Yeah. . . Yeah. True. It's funny, though. I never used to be like that. Before I came to Hinamizawa, I was pretty. . . I don't know. Docile? I used to think I just wasn't a very passionate person. I guess it just meant I didn't have things to get passionate about before. Things change."

They reached the white lines, an orange hand glowing before them. Mion sorted through the noise of the city, the heat of the summer, the chiseled perforations in the concrete. The rapidly receding feeling of slight, of wasted chances, of stupid decisions, and of miraculous shapes that took the form of friends. Some things were just futile, while others were fragile and precious. Standing there, together with him, she didn't really have to give much thought about where the divide lay.

She smiled then, understanding the laughter. "Yep, we've _definitely_ trained you well."

Mion couldn't really say where she imagined herself being earlier in the morning when she awoke, but decided that this place was pretty okay.

She looked at him, the two of them, standing there at the halted flow, waiting for the new electric colors to light their way. And she was glad. Beyond the frustration and shame was the knowledge that at least for him, what she carried and what she owned at that moment was enough. So very glad. Because that was all she had left.

And he was fine with that.


	7. leave me here

_Closing excerpt is taken from Lord Alfred Tennyson's poetic requiem, "In Memoriam A.H.H.". Also, nod of creative respect and homage to the always scintillating Mithrigil._

**leave me here**

Mion sat on a stool in a diner, and wondered if she'd been fooled by her own memories. She'd never really been a burger person, but she could swear that there were many times in her earlier days that this parlor made food that was at least edible. She'd been poking around her plate for five minutes, her feet dangling, the majority of her attention focused on the street outside the window. Sunlight glowing upon concrete, people shuffling by oblivious. If she could paint herself at that moment, her elbows propped up and her pony tail dangling in a lonely arc below her seat and a bland, aloof curtain atop her gaze, she'd call the picture 'October' and take great effort to color the edges of the lines in orange, brown and gold. Even if it was the middle of June. But art was like that. Everything always had to be dying. Although, life was like that, too.

"These fries taste like shoelaces," she sighed, eating them anyway.

The glass door swung open at the end of the bar, a pair of dangling bells chiming out as Rena entered the restaurant. She looked around briefly before catching Mion sitting only a few feet away from the entrance and walked up to the stool next to the older girl and removed her hat to place it on top. She lifted a white shopping bag onto the bar, before giving Mion a sheepish smile. "Hi Mi-chan. Sorry I'm late."

Mion shook her head. "Not an issue."

Rena pointed at the cashier. "I'm going to order. I'll be right back, okay?"

"Mm." Mion took a shallow bite of her hamburger, and chewed distractedly as she watched the people walk by. This had once been tradition, an exercise she'd found endlessly amusing when she was younger; sitting at these stools, with either Rena or Shion, eating burgers and drinking milkshakes and insulting the people that walked by the window where they were safe from ever being heard. But that had been years ago, when Rena was still Reina and Mion lived in Okinomiya and Keiichi had not entered their lives and. . .

Mion sighed. "They just make them so half-assed these days. What's with the scarf? Is this the winter of stupidity? This town, I tell ya. . ."

"Hi again," Rena said, picking up her hat and sliding onto the stool. She placed her hat next to her shopping bag and lightly clutched at a stub of paper with her number on it. "What're you doing?"

"Oh you know. Sitting here and judging other people I don't know while talking to myself like a lunatic."

"Have you been at it very long?"

"The crazy thing? Psh, yeah. For sixteen years, and still going strong!"

Rena laughed politely. "Um, hee hee, no, I mean people watching."

Mion shrugged. "Like ten minutes. We haven't done that kind of thing since before you left, years ago. So I was practicing. You know. Honing the craft."

Rena smiled, looking down at her slip of paper. At the bandages lining her fingers. "I never really considered myself to be a mean-spirited person, but. . . I missed it, admittedly. I did."

"I'm thinking that it's the glass," Mion theorized, knocking lightly at the window in front of them with her knuckles. "Kind of like a magic mirror, only we see how twisted other people are instead of ourselves. Ngh, look at that. What kind of hat is that? He actually _paid_ for that?"

"It's to keep the government out of his thoughts."

Mion looked over at Rena and then laughed. "Yeah. That's it exactly."

"I'm such a hypocrite," Rena said suddenly, quietly.

"Eh. So am I. Who cares? Aren't we allowed to nitpick?"

"I suppose so. It isn't very nice."

Mion pushed a few fries around her plate, through a wad of ketchup, around a string of parsley, anywhere other than into her mouth. "You know, Rena, I haven't heard you laugh in a very long time. Really laugh, I mean."

Rena blinked. "Really?"

"Yeah. Really. So drop the baggage. They can't hear us. That's the point."

"It's just. . . there hasn't really been anything to laugh about lately. It's been happening so fast, and. . . every time. . . every time I even think about smiling, my hand starts to hurt so much."

Mion sighed, having to prevent herself from punching the glass. "So we're going to jump right into that? I thought we could lighten the mood a bit first."

"I'm sorry," Rena apologized, the paper in her fingers crumpling into a wrinkled fist. "I just can't think about anything else right now."

"And I can?" Mion scoffed, trying to deny the obvious. "I'm no different. Every single minute that- okay, no, you can_not_ walk down a public street with a shirt eight inches about your waist when you have that kind of gut."

Rena looked up and out the window, turning back to Mion with a half-smile. "Almost had me."

"Heh. Give it time. Some winners will come along." Mion abandoned her little potato march and began munching on the fries. She grimaced. "Though I'm sorry to warn you, the food isn't as good as I remember it being. Thanks a lot, nostalgia."

"It probably tastes bad because you're in a sour mood."

Mion tilted her head. "Yeah, maybe. Guess you're doomed too, then."

Rena smiled, raising her index finger. "Not a chance! I know a lot of ways to fix up failed food! You just need spirit and enthusiasm."

"Well I'm envious," Mion admitted. "I get the feeling I'm just pouring poison into this. It's going to be a long night, I'm thinking."

"Cheer up," Rena told her, beginning to fish around in her shopping bag. She pulled a bottle of aspirin out and placed it in front of her on the counter. "Talk like that will ruin food forever. And that's just no good."

"Oh if it were only so easy."

A voice from the other side of the restaurant shouted out. "Forty-seven!"

Rena swiveled on her seat. "That's my number. Be right back."

Mion didn't turn, and Rena vanished into the light din of conversation that swelled about the room. She looked down at her hands, spreading her fingers out before her, wondering how they would speak to her if they were dressed in Rena's wounds. She could see the weeping red, the torn fingernails, the bruising tissue. What a mockery of paradise. It would have been easy - so, _so _easy - to just pass him off as some bizarre whacko and give him his space, letting him do whatever it is he believed he wanted. That kind of thing happened all the time, and after years of finding herself on the end of everyone's pointed fingers, Mion had grown ambivalent to both the dance and the pretense.

Except that she was crying.

Her untarnished hands covered her eyes as the world smudged in weighted colors. And this was why. He was among the few people on this earth that she had allowed beyond her barriers, welcomed in from the outside world, granted a view of the soil beneath. A makeshift garden grown from borrowed time. It was so stupid. This kind of thing was inevitable.

Her fingers pulled away and she sniffled, her face tired and dry. "Damn you, Kei-chan. Even if we fix things, I'm never going to be able to forget that. Don't you understand that?"

She sat there quietly for a few moments, trying to force more of the bland fries into her mouth. Above everything she merely hoped that there would be some good to come of this, some great epiphany that would spin the situation, and they would move on and laugh about how they'd all made silly mistakes and misunderstandings. That there would be a gouging, complete erasing of the things he'd said to her. She looked above the line of the buildings across the street. Clouds lulled along in white shadows. In this imaginary painting of hers called October, the sky moved faster at this time of year.

Rena returned with her plate, settling its steaming contents onto the bar in front of her as she sat back down at her stool. She clapped her hands once, smiling. "They still have these cute little flag toothpicks!"

Mion smirked. "All the better for you to impale yourself with, my dear."

Rena eyed her hamburger carefully. "It still smells good, at least."

"But look at it," Mion argued, gesturing at Rena's plate. "I mean even your onion rings are shining like polished leather. I think my heart is failing just looking at them."

"Hee hee. . . well, wish me luck."

Appearing to take great care and concentration, Rena gingerly scooped the burger up, being careful not to allow any of its contents to slide out of the bun. She stared at it intensely as if baiting a mortal foe before casting a sideways glance at Mion and then taking a small bite. It was pretty sad, Mion mused, how they were both making a big deal out of something so ridiculously ordinary. The lengths to which people will go to distract themselves was astounding.

". . . And?" Mion nudged.

Rena chewed in contemplation. ". . . Well. . ."

"The suspense is overwhelming!"

Rena swallowed, lowering the burger back onto the plate. She poked at the toothpick flag with one finger. ". . . Nostalgia sucks."

Mion started laughing. She shoveled a few ketchup-laden fries into her mouth, shaking her head in amusement. "That was such an un-Rena thing to say."

Instead of eating, Rena propped her elbows up on the bar and stared out the window. "I liked it when the kitchen staff would take breaks and come out here to sit and talk with you. It was a lot more personable and I guess it made things seem better than they actually were. Also we were just little girls, back then, so I guess they'd spend time with us since we would probably enjoy anything they put in front of us. Well, maybe. I don't know. That man's coat is crime against nature. It is."

Mion's fingers drummed on her leg, frowning. "You don't have to try so hard."

"I'm sorry."

"Is that just for my amusement?"

Rena gave Mion a sad look. "Would you think less of me if I said yes?"

"No," Mion assured her, knowing full well that distraction was impossible for the both of them. "I appreciate it, but at the same time, you shouldn't feel obligated to cater to my own delusions."

"Some things we can change, and other things we can't," Rena said quietly. She unfolded her napkin and spread it across her lap, taking long, unnecessary strokes against its surface to smoothen it out. "I never liked that part of myself, even if I had fun with you indulging it. I don't want to be mean like that anymore."

"That's perfectly reasonable."

"It. . . it isn't because I don't like spending time with you."

Mion nodded. "I know. I didn't think that. You've got your reasons, and I'm not going to put you in a place where you feel you have to compromise them."

"Thanks," Rena said. She picked up an onion ring and plopped it into her mouth. "But. . . you were right, though. This isn't anywhere near as a good as I remember it being."

"Heh. Is anything?"

Rena took a long breath, staring at her bandages. ". . . Yes."

Mion decided that this had gone on long enough, and that there was little point in continuing to mealy-mouth the issue. So she just came right out with it. "What the hell is happening to him?"

"I don't know."

"Did we thumb him in the eye somehow, about something we didn't know about?"

"I don't know," Rena repeated dully.

Mion found her hands were crushing the utensils they held. This was the real obstacle, the overwhelming monolith that could not possibly be true, because if it was, everything meant nothing and there was no point to bother pretending to care about anything else again. "Or does he just. . . not want to be friends with us anymore?"

". . . Don't say that," Rena whispered. There was a duality of sorrow and fury in her eyes, one that Mion could understand entirely.

Mion seemed to deflate against the bar. They'd come here to chat and laugh and make fun of people they didn't know, but here, they were the jokes. They were intelligent and concerned, gifted with pasts that consisted of witnessing bonds innumerable severed. And yet now, even with those assets, they were at a loss. How could they proceed? How could they protect themselves without abandoning him? "You know, it's pretty sad. I could accept just about any reason other than that."

Rena hissed suddenly. "Ow."

"What?"

"Some of the grease got into my cut," she said quietly, picking up her napkin to wipe at the edge of one of her bandages. "Nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to worry about. . . yeah." Mion's foot lashed out violently, kicking the baseboard beneath the window with a loud bang. Other patrons turned to her in curiosity, but she couldn't be bothered to care. "If only."

Rena picked at her food. "So what do we do?"

"There's really only one answer to that."

"What's that?"

Mion ran her hands through her hair, eyes closed. "We keep being his friends. For as long as we can."

He just knelt and disconnected. And who could blame him? Mion tried sorting through the past few weeks to find where she'd misstepped, but was disgusted with herself when the numbers leapt beyond counting. If there was some way to wipe the slate clean, to meet him again for the first time, to realize how _stupid _it would be to keep playing with his fears as a means of trying to tease him back to his normal self instead of addressing them seriously. It should have been so easy, since he was merely mirroring the steps that Satoshi had taken before him, and everyone was still moving in the wrong sequence. After learning of the dark that wreathed itself about Hinamizawa, who _wouldn't_ try to distance themselves?

She wanted to scream. Pick up the phone and call everyone she knew and beg them to do what she couldn't.

Beside her, undoubtedly mired in the same uncertain sadness, Rena nearly began to cry. Her tattered fingers covered her eyes. "I wish we could start over so much. . . that I could still see him every day, in the morning, and say hello and walk with him to school. . . that we could play games, and have fun together. . . that he'd still want me around. . ."

Mion looked out the window, and could have sworn that she was out there, because she was the stupidest person in the world. "I know. Me too. I'd. . . I'd give anything to have that back."

And how did that song go? 'Sipping coke and playing games?' Yeah. That was more or less accurate. Running around, thoughtless, enjoying all things and believing everything they were told and not doubting anything they saw like little kids. And everything was alright. Aside from, you know, the lies that were destroying them.

All of the people from history were dust, and Mion was sick of people just vanishing. But Oyashiro-sama was that kind of god. There was no enlightenment, no spiritual awakening, no ascension and no nirvana. Just fear and absolute control.

There was no human soul, and everything they'd ever built together was gone. But it was all just a test. An elaborate breathing practice, meditating on the subject of lost selves; Keiichi was out there somewhere, flickering between 'here' and 'away' in silence, solar winds in a system of bodiless light, signalling to them in bursts that he was terrified and was begging to be saved. She could close her eyes. See him, his true face hiding beneath all of his fears, floating in the void of space. He was there, and this was just an exercise.

Inhale. Transform. Release.

x x x x x

Three days earlier Mion opened the door and found Rena drenched and miserable on her doorstep.

"Well here's a surprise. I was just about to head out to the store to buy some sake. Um, don't you have an umbrella?"

"H-Hi. Sorry to bother you. And no, I forgot one."

Mion shook her head, stepping back to allow Rena entry. "Get inside, you're soaked."

Everything came full-tilt once Rena was under the gold of the lights, her hands trembling and covered in blood; make-up running dark clouds on her face, traces of inky red smeared on her skirt. "What- oh, Jesus Christ, Rena! What happened?"

Rena shook her head. "It was my fault."

Mion slammed the door shut, knowing immediately where the source of the damage was. She glared. "What did he say?"

"Um. . . well. . ."

Mion reached out and took Rena's left wrist, raising her fingers, all color draining in her own face. Elongated lines of scratchy purple traced the open wounds, skin atop her knuckles shorn off in tufts of bleeding pale. Mion felt her heart lurch into her throat. "Your hand- Rena! Did he do that?"

Rena pulled her hand away. "Don't be mad at him. Please don't."

"Well tough shit! I'm furious! How could you just- he- at- what the HELL!"

"He's- he's lost right now, Mi-chan," Rena said, her voice and gaze haunted by some specter Mion was certain she never, ever wanted to meet. Rena reached up and removed her flattened cap, fingers of her good hand squeezing out its rainwater while shaking fitfully. "And I was being stupid, and- it was my fault, okay? I was just playing around, and I should have known better, that he would've. . ."

Mion let out a shaky breath. She reached out and took Rena by the shoulders, guiding her away from the door. ". . . C'mon."

Rena didn't resist as Mion led her down the hallway, their feet thumping in tired, uncertain steps against the polished wood. Mion was grateful that Rena had chosen to knock at the back entrance, because Mion had no idea how she could possibly explain this to the visitors sitting in the dining hall near the front door. Their boisterous, jovial voices scrambled down the long halls of the estate, almost as if they were mocking Rena's lost and injured lapse through purgatory. Mion reached out and slid the bathroom door open, gesturing for Rena to enter. She complied.

"Sit," Mion commanded.

Rena ambled over to the toilet and lowered its seat, tiny drips of blood dabbling onto its porcelain, seashell surface. She sat, hands held together between her legs as she looked at the carved Carrara marble of the floor. "It's all my fault."

Mion closed the door behind them. "_Our_ fault," she corrected. She walked over to the elaborate dual-planed mirror in silver trim, pulling out a drawer from the counter beneath. "We're making all the same mistakes again." She pulled a triage kit from the drawer and slid it closed, placing the kit onto the counter next to the sink. "Does it hurt a lot?"

Rena used her good hand to wipe a few tears from her face. "Yeah. A lot."

Mion sighed. What a stupid question that was. "Okay. Sit." As if she wasn't already sitting. Amazing how fright can make people say and do the dumbest things. She withdrew a vial of ethanol, a lump of white puffy cotton swab and a package of adhesive bandages, then looking over at Rena from the reflection of the mirror. "How?"

"In the door."

Mion grimaced. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

". . . No," Mion argued, closing the kit with a metal snap. She turned around, hands pensively holding their respective objects. "It is. I'm apologizing, because. . . I forgive him of this. And I hate myself for that. I don't mean to betray you, and I'm so. . . so very mad right now, but. . . I'm sorry, Rena. I'm a terrible leader."

Rena looked up at Mion then, her eyes suddenly alight in intensity like a luminous merging of blue stars. "Don't think that. You aren't. Okay? I understand. I know what you mean. I know."

Mion walked over to the tub next to the toilet and sat down on its alabaster surface, reaching out to take Rena's injured hand. "How did he do this to us?"

Rena refused to look down at her damaged fingers any more, so instead she kept her gaze level with Mion's. "You aren't going to stop, are you?"

"Not until I know he's gone forever," Mion confirmed, her voice soft. "And. . . maybe not even then."

"Then we feel the same."

Mion placed the bandages next to her on the tub and began to unscrew the vial of ethanol. Somewhere in the great Sonozaki state, men and women were drunk and cheerful in the renewing days after the Watanagashi. A brass porthole window above the lavish acrylic tub in the grotto-themed bathroom sat unblinking like a cold harvest sun as rain rinsed across its mirror surface. Here they were, in the lap of tradition and luxury and security and festivity, quietly and completely spinning apart.

Mion looked sheepishly at Rena's eyes as she dabbed a swab of cotton with the ethanol. "Sorry about this, but this is going to hurt like a bastard."

Rena smiled. "I can take it!"

"Hah, never doubted you couldn't."

All the same, Mion could hear Rena's teeth come together as she touched the swab lightly on the wounds, as her fingers tensed and almost jerked away. Mion had to exert a lot of effort in order to avoid imagining what that must have felt like. She reached over Rena's lap with her other hand and pulled a length of toilet paper from its spindle beside the toilet and began to use the soft tissue to soak up the strings of blood that had drawn scarlet figures down Rena's wrist. Red pens drawing at random. Mion then reached out with her foot and pulled the trash can beside the tub closer to them so she wouldn't have to cease attending Rena's hand and then crumpled the soiled tissue and dropped it into the garbage.

Silence continued to stretch a pressured barrier across the room. Even the shouts and laughter from the other side of the manor were just a dull, muffled noise.

Mion shifted her grip on Rena's hand. "So I'm going to kick his ass when I see him tomorrow."

"Don't joke."

"I'm not. He's going to be so very sorry he did this to you."

Rena's free hand reached out to grab Mion's shoulder. "Mi-chan. . . No. You can't do that."

Mion's hands stopped, and she looked at the younger girl blankly. "Rena."

"This is my mistake," Rena insisted, her voice firm in spite of everything. "Okay? This was between me and him, and this is what I get for fooling around. I'm sorry. This-"

"Don't you _dare _tell me it's not my business," Mion interrupted darkly. "You came here in the rain bleeding, and then tell me I'm not involved? That I can't. . ."

Rena wet her lips, almost choking on the words before she even spoke them. ". . . When Satoshi-kun left. . ."

"Don't."

"He tried to tell me about everything," Rena continued, regardless. "He tried, and I failed him. I understood, and knew, and he thought I might be able to do something. He handed me a map of where he was going, and. . . and I didn't even look at it. And now he's lost, because of me."

"Rena. Stop it. Kei-chan is not Satoshi."

"I know that," Rena acknowledged, her voice helpless. "But they are both our dear friends, and. . . and we're failing them. I can't stand it." Rena took a few shuddery, disquieted breaths to calm herself, watching as Mion dropped the bloodied cotton into the trash and began to open the package of bandages. "There has to be some way."

"You mean to say that you don't accept the possibility that he's doing this on his own," Mion observed, pulling the latex strips away from the absorbent pads. She began to wrap the antiseptic halos around Rena's fingers. "That he's pushing us away because he just doesn't like us."

"Don't you feel that way too?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But I do have to wonder if that's me being logical and rational, or if that's just pride talking. Or if I'm trying to find some explanation - _any_ explanation - other than the one that would hurt the most."

". . . Hey. . . Do you remember- ow."

"Sorry," Mion apologized, releasing Rena's hands as she completed the bandaging procedure.

Rena was quiet for a moment. Water dripped along the tiles, rain touched on the window above. "Do you remember," she continued, "when we told him that he was expected to participate in the. . . what was it? Was it? That thing. . ."

Mion snorted. "The track meet for organized youth in this prefecture as a standardized testing exercise to determine the health and fitness ratio of the local populace that didn't actually exist?" Just running through the lengthy sentence brought a smile to her face, the memory soft and warm in its timeless arms. "Oh yeah. The way he stayed for hours after school running laps for four days to 'practice'. Yeah, that was amazing."

Rena smiled. "I've sometimes wondered how long he'd have done that if Chie-sensei hadn't asked him what he was doing."

Mion laughed softly. "He'd probably be out there right now, I bet." She leaned back on the tub, her hands resting along its edges. "That moron."

"I think he knew," Rena said.

"That we bullshitted him?"

"Yeah."

". . . Probably."

Rena's eyes traced the veins in the marble floor, the amber shine of its surface as the lights above the mirror fell upon the stone like fog over water. "Keiichi-kun was like that. He'd do things to make us laugh, or to make us happy, or. . . he'd do things he didn't want to. And he wouldn't do them because he wanted us to like him, or to fit in, or. . . he'd do them because he really liked us. And he really cared about us, and wanted to make us happy, and. . ." She choked off, tears swelling in her eyes again. "Because Keiichi-kun is that kind of person."

"Rena. . ."

"There's no way that boy I saw tonight is Keiichi-kun. He wouldn't do this to me. He wouldn't. . ."

Mion leaned forward, placing her hand on Rena's shoulder. "Rena, listen. I know. Everything you just said. It's like before, like you were saying, but this time, it's just moreso. . . the stakes are higher. And I don't mean to say that it's because of Satoshi, or. . ."

"It's because of Oyashiro-sama," Rena finished.

The invocation was, as it always was when it came to Rena, the surge that changed the perception. Rena was a strong-willed and intelligent person with many different strings of emotion lassoed about many different safeguards, be it people, ideas, or things. But for all of its strength, support for all these things could be kicked away with just one name. Mion was aware of this, and always knew that whenever Oyashiro-sama was mentioned around Rena, one had to tread very lightly. But all the same, Mion could absolutely not escape the possibility that he might be at the very epicenter of an unfolding catastrophe, one she had witnessed first-hand many times before.

"That's just it. It might be that. It really might be exactly that."

Rena's eyes dulled. "That he's taking Keiichi-kun away from us?"

"Maybe. I don't want to believe it, but it could be true." Mion squeezed Rena's shoulder supportively, trying to convey that at the very least, she was with her in that room together, and no matter how bleak Rena perceived things, Mion would not let her face them alone. "And I know this is an extremely delicate subject for you. But I want you to realize something right now, okay? If Oyashiro-sama has decided that Kei-chan has sinned, or that we have sinned, and. . . this is his way of injuring us. . . things are going to be different this time."

"You can't defy him, Mi-chan," Rena said, slight color returning to her face. She faced Mion and Mion realized it wasn't a statement so much as a warning. "It's impossible."

Mion withdrew her hand, and felt herself glaring at her twisted, side-melted reflection in the mirror; a clouded organic shape smudged into obscurity from the angle she witnessed it from. Her voice was heavy. "You know what? I don't give a damn. I don't care how taboo it is, or how sacrilegious it is, or how many precepts or divine laws I might be stepping on. I _know _these things! I'm Mion Sonozaki, clan heiress, and I wasn't born yesterday. I realize the gravity of what I'm saying here. But still, I want you and him to know this. You, so you can understand and maybe see what. . . well. . . but in his case. . ."

Strong hands clutched to one another very tightly. "There are things created so we will fear and respect him. And that hasn't really changed, but now, there's only anger. I'm just one person. A girl, like anyone else. And because of my birthright, I have to maintain this maze. But. . . if he. . . if he takes our Kei-chan away from us. . . if he pulls him out of our lives like he did Satoshi. . . then when it comes time to face him on my own terms, with my own mortality, all I can say is that he's going to have a LOT of explaining to do."

She expected resistance. For Rena to begin to slip off into her own little world of phantoms, to suddenly become unreasonable and irretrievable. But none of those things happened. Instead, Rena looked down at the fresh bandages on her battered fingers, a sad, warm yearning in her eyes, before looking over at Mion in complete understanding. "We can still protect him," she said. "There's still time left."

Underneath the laughter and the pouring rain and the lines of ruin and agony, Mion nodded. "I know. And we will."

Looking at the dark patches beneath Rena's eyes, Mion realized that the two of them were very much the same. Even beyond the superficialities. They were just like everyone else born into the wonderful prison of Hinamizawa.

Bred to live a life on their knees, bowing to the syringe of godhood, unable and unwilling to see the change. They were less themselves as individuals, and more creations of the collective; those that would survive were bent into shape and realigned, and those that would perish were broken entirely. But even if it was something that couldn't be named, or even if it hadn't had its chance to nurture into growth, they both understood that things _were_ changing. In themselves, and in the world. A glimpse into beauty so potent it was horrifying. And all they could really do was look back and ask:

_What have we learned? And what if we aren't the same? What then?_

x x x x x

More or less, it happened like this:

Mion was sitting at her desk, minding her own business, doing what she could to stop herself from dozing off. A morning sun pierced its way into the classroom through tall windows, dew shimmering on the grass outside like a carpet of thousand-fold gemstones. It was a pretty standard morning for early May. Cicadas sawed in disharmony, butterflies sliding up long-grass to fold and unfold, the scent of freshly trimmed lawns on the wind, all that. And then he walked into their lives.

The sound of the chair in front of her being pulled back caused her to lift her head. A teenage boy she'd never seen before slung his bag over the back of his chair, and then spun it around so it was facing her. He sat down and stared at her directly, and she was rifled awake; his gaze wasn't exactly predatory or confrontational, but it was a far cry from being cautious or timid.

"So you're Mion Sonozaki?" he asked her point blank. "Am I right?"

She sat up and appraised him with interest. "On the nose. You are. . . ?"

"Keiichi Maebara," he announced, extending to her his hand. "Just moved into town on the weekend."

Mion accepted his hand and shook it. After which she gave significant thought to his name. "Hm. . . oh yeah, you're the artist's son, right?"

"That's me."

Rena, who until Keiichi walked into the room had been sitting at her desk next to Mion and drawing colorful lines through her homework with a yellow highlighter, touched Mion's shoulder lightly. "Keiichi-kun is the boy I ran into in the supermarket in Okinomiya on Friday I was telling you about."

"Oooh, right! You're that nut," Mion stated tactlessly.

Keiichi sighed "Well, aren't we off to a great start already."

Rena grinned. "Keiichi-kun, to be fair, you did get caught stealing."

Keiichi cleared his throat nervously. "Okay, I was warned about how things could spread and get contorted in small villages really fast, so I was prepared for that. It really was just a huge misunderstanding. See-"

Mion waved her hands. "WHOA, time out! 'Contorted'? You taking shots at my cute little Hinamizawa, buds? You do know who you're talking to, huh? Draw your lines carefully, coloring book boy."

Keiichi, in his infinite wisdom of realizing that he was speaking to a person of significant stature in what was now his new life, decided that backpedalling and mending were not merely as a prudent course as standing and fighting. "What is this, amateur hour? I could have come up with ten digs each more impressive than the last in that space of time."

And the spring morning of a cool May ground to a crashing halt. The younger underclassmen even seemed to stop their own conversations and turn back to where the _school _president was just outright insulted by a person that no one even knew. Concerned whispers began filtering through the room. In particular it was very disconcerting for many of the students how similar Keiichi was in appearance - a lanky build, an ironed white shirt over dark slacks, messy hair and even a similar posture. . . Satoshi had not disappeared from their minds. And for a school that saw very few newcomers at later ages the dissonance between known and accepted images was disconcerting.

Rena looked between Mion and Keiichi awkwardly. "Um. . ."

Appearances, maybe. But personalities? At the very least, to Mion, one thing was glaringly apparent: this was _not _Satoshi v.2.0.

Mion slammed her hand flat against her desk and burst into laughter. "Oh, we've got a live one! Okay. So take a dig at me."

Keiichi blinked at her. "What, for real?"

Mion pointedly looked down at his shoes. "Cold feet?"

Keiichi shrugged. "Hey, I'm just saying, I don't really want to go embarrassing you two minutes after I met you."

She gestured to herself with her thumb. "_**I**_ insult people at a sixteenth grade level."

"Well apparently they never bothered to swing the arithmetic stick in your direction in this fictional school of yours that couldn't possibly exist because wow, who goes to grade school for sixteen years?"

And. Oh. What a lovely spring morning. What times these are that we share.

Mion looked around the room, at the curious and concerned faces. And then she smiled. ". . . Alright, that was serviceable enough. So go on ahead with the lies about not stealing thing."

Keiichi seemed to take the whole yawing mood thing in stride, and launched into the anecdote. "My Dad thought it would be a great way to get ourselves situated in our new life here by buying some of the local apparel, right? So he went out and bought some tacky t-shirts with some really cheesy regional slang or something on them. . . like, 'Hinamizawa: A Dam Good Town', or something."

"Oh yeah," Mion said, acting as if it was hard to remember something she knew intimately of. "I know the guy who came up with the design for those. And you think they're tacky?"

"I thought they were cute and kind of clever," Rena said.

Keiichi looked over at her. "No, totally tacky."

". . . Yeah, truth," Mion agreed. "Attempted irreverence, but meh. Very tacky. Continue."

"So anyway, I was going into the supermarket when I ran into Rena."

Rena closed her homework and put the cap back on her highlighter. "I had been meaning to go say hello, but I kept forgetting about it. So I saw his shirt, and I figured that was a good time to introduce myself."

Keiichi nodded. "Yeah, that. Anyway-"

"Morning!" Satoko interrupted, walking into class with Rika and swinging her backpack off her shoulders. She rest the bag on her desk and them walked over to them, looking at Keiichi carefully. "Hey, who's this?"

"This is Keiichi Maebara," Rena introduced. "And this is Satoko Hojo and Rika Furude."

Satoko's eyes lit up in mischief. "Ooooh, the thief!"

Keiichi sighed. "Should I just hold my tongue for a while until everyone gets around to the part where they want the story?"

Rika walked up beside Satoko after putting her bag onto her desk. "You've been bad already, Keiichi? Tsk tsk. Not even a story about being mistaken for someone else because you were wearing the same shirt as them will save you now. . ."

Keiichi just sat there stunned for about ten seconds. He looked back and forth between Satoko and Rika and eventually said, "Wow, okay, what the hell? How did you know about that?"

Mion knew, at that very moment, in that minuscule amount of time, that Keiichi's coming to their classroom was a very good thing. She could cite many rayless and purging reasons, about smoothing over imperfections and tears or injecting a bloodstream of the world outside into their stagnating culture, but it wasn't really for any of those reasons. Here was someone who had already shown, quite vividly, that he wouldn't roll over. That he would fight back. And that alone was enough - enough to see this as a great opportunity, and, on a smaller scale, enough to not tell him about how the person that accused him of stealing was Mion's uncle that knew full well who Keiichi was and was just screwing with him on that day so he could tell everyone, 'Hey, did you hear about how I messed around with that new kid?'

As if she'd tell him _that_.

"Didn't you know?" Mion said sagely. "We're mind readers here. Your whole life will soon be picked apart and prodded at by our merciless hooks."

Satoko grinned. "I see you've already shown him our true face. Not that I'd have it any other way. I see many happy days ahead!"

Keiichi crossed his arms, obviously seeing that they were fooling with him, but still deciding to play along with it for whatever his reasons were. "Bring it on. I don't fold easy. Plus I carry a neural-scrambler around in my back pocket, so read my thoughts at your own risk! One day you might be reaching in to find out what I had for breakfast, and the next thing you know? BAM! Brain pudding. I always get the last laugh."

Mion tapped a well-manicured fingernail atop her desk, watching him with eyes that were almost feral in their sadism. "Hah hah, I like the way you dance, Murnau. I don't know what kind of weak-ass city girls you're used to, but out here, our hands will break you with little effort."

Rena pointed at him, eyes shining. "There is great evil lying in wait for Keiichi-kun."

"Don't try to run away, though," Rika told him pleasantly. "It's just more fun for us if you struggle struggle."

Keiichi sat back in his chair, looking at all of them, and then crossed his arms. He gave them a defiant look. "Yeah well. We'll see what happens."

"Oh yes, Kei-chan, we will," Mion replied.

That brought him up short. He looked at her in shock. "Hey, what is that? A demeaning address already?"

"Your pitiful resistance will be stamped down in a matter of time. Your attempts to delay the inevitable are just so childishly adorable, Kei-**chyannn**."

"Ugh," he complained.

Mion chuckled. "Happy days indeed."

"Having fun?"

The five of them turned to find Chie standing behind them, with the entirety of the rest of the class turned in their chairs to watch them carefully. In spite of the pleasant look on Chie's face, they could see the chalk in her hand and the tiny twitch of her raised eyebrow, indicating that she'd already meant to start the day off and they'd completely ignored her. They cleared their throats nervously.

"Good morning, Chie-sensei!" Rena said awkwardly. She received a mere nod of acquiescence.

Satoko just shrugged, pointing at Keiichi. "Did you know that this guy reads at a second grade level? I thought this school had standards."

Mion started laughing.

Keiichi flustered as he realized he was the center of attention of everyone in the class. "Uh, well. . . I'm here to ease the curve!"

"Nice save," Mion laughed.

Chie lightly bopped Keiichi on the top of his head with her stick of chalk, little flakes settling in his hair like granules of dandruff. "Maebara-kun, I'm glad you're with us now, but please don't disrupt my classroom during school hours."

Rika shook her head as she began to walk over to her desk with Satoko. "Keiichi, you just keep being bad. Soon you'll be outside clapping chalk erasers together and be all covered in powder while going coughy coughy. You won't like it much."

"I was- they were- hey!" He sighed, realizing there really was no way to talk himself out of things, especially when he was trying to make a strong first impression in the first place. "Um. Yes, sensei," he said, embarrassed, turning his chair so he was sitting at his desk properly and facing the front of the room. Just about all of the underclassmen were giggling at him.

Chie looked down at Mion. "And Sonozaki-san, I asked if you would please come to the front so we may begin class this morning."

Mion blinked. "Uh. Right. Sorry."

"See?" Keiichi said without turning around, utterly incapable of leaving the argument without getting in the last word. "'Hooks', my foot. I'm wise to this game."

Mion shook her head as she stood up, and as Chie turned to walk back to the front of the class. Before leaving Mion leaned in next to Rena and whispered, "The supermarket? Really? Come on. . . where'd you really find this guy?"

"Hee hee. . . why? Complaints?"

A lot of things crossed her mind. How lonely things had been after both Rena and Shion had moved out of her life in her earliest days. How her friendship with Satoshi had always been weakened and ultimately amputated by the oppressive abuse and hate he endured from those beneath her station. Of how even in her closest circle of friends, everyone had lost someone or something precious and there had always been that lingering, perennial footpath that seemed to lead back to the Sonozaki name.

About how there was some goofy kid named Keiichi that was immune and removed from all of that sitting in front of her, trying to dust chalk out of his hair.

". . . Only too many."

Mion pushed her chair back under her desk and walked up to the front of the classroom next to their sensei so they could begin the morning properly. She had no idea what had possessed her Grandmother to allow a family like the Maebara's into Hinamizawa, even after hearing her 'winter-air' metaphor. It made sense, but at the same time, it really didn't. But fun was something not always on hand, due to myriad reasons, so she wasn't about to complain.

In any event, past and rules notwithstanding, for Mion Sonozaki, things just became at least a little bit more interesting.

x x x x x

In the evening on the last day of her life, Mion stood outside of Keiichi's house knowing that this was her final chance.

Rain had been falling for what felt like weeks, and tonight, it finally let up. All of Hinamizawa glowed with an orange and starry hue, mirrors in the grass and mud painting the sky moving onwards. With little attentive effort, Mion brushed mosquitoes away from her arms as she stood outside the gate to Keiichi's home. What was in fact barely over a month felt like a lifetime. Had it only been that long? Was she really so pathetic that she could actually count the days? And what had really changed? Herself, everything? Or even nothing at all. She wondered why it had never been this way with Satoshi.

She had loved Satoshi, for what it was worth. That was mostly just her personality. Not really in the same way that she loved Keiichi - not at all, if she really sat down to think about it - but she was always worried about him, wondering where he was going, wondering what was happening to him in his train-wreck of a life. Wondering what it would take to make him happy. She had hoped that Shion would have been able to help with that, but there really hadn't been enough time. Once Shion had set her sights on Satoshi, outright confessing to Mion her feelings about him, Mion had tried to step back and let her do what she could.

They could have been happy. That wasn't even it - they_ should_ have. But it all got away from them somewhere.

Blisters and scrapes that had landed on Rena's fingers kept coming back to her, rusting the valves of her heart like cancerous tufts of swelling obsidian; thought and emotion were breaking down, fluidity was beginning to slow to a trickle, and all she could really see was that all this borrowed time was finally being used up. Why was he doing this? Why was he acting this way? Why? Why why why why _why why why whywhywhywhywhy__**WHY**_?

_Please let me save you. Please. . . I don't want that for you. . . you don't deserve that end._

As if sentiment was enough.

She pushed the gate open. Rena had called, told Mion that Keiichi had been found collapsed in the woods just off the main road leading to Okinomiya. That he was panting and raving on about being pursued by armed men in nondescript gray clothing that had been trying to kill him, eventually cornering him in the woods and beating him into unconsciousness. Except that he was perfectly fine. Not a scratch on him. What he had really been running from, no one could say. If there had even been anything at all.

When Mion finally broke down and called Irie about this, about everything, he told her to drop everything and get to his house immediately. That he would be on his way as soon as he gathered together the right medicine to make sure that Keiichi would be okay. That when she was with Keiichi she should be very careful, that she should behave in a way that would make Keiichi feel safe, ensure him that everything was the way it had always been. And then he'd hung up.

So here she was. She didn't even really know what that meant. With Keiichi, things had always been a bit different from with everyone else. With most people she had known, when they were ill or in need of consoling, the way to achieve those means would be to speak soothingly to them, tell them everything was going to be alright. But Keiichi wasn't like that. He liked verbal fencing. Plotting ways to dismantle his friends' defenses, to tease them by means of consolation. And that was what Mion was most comfortable with, too - she would push, and he would respond. Would holding back that impulse be a lie that he would perceive? Telling him that everything was okay, that they were there with him, that there was nothing to be afraid of, would that be the mistake that would cost them everything?

She could think about the way he pointed the bat at her, drawing lines between them, dissecting their friendship like fingers through soot. She could think about the awful feeling that escaped even as she tried to smother it, of her tears burning down her face as he eagerly tore at her most fragile rooms and halls; even though, beyond it all, she knew that there was no way he understood how agonizing it was to hear what he was telling her. He was merely doing it to protect himself, spurred onward by some fiend grinning in the unseen black. And it was the very fear that divided them that she knew she had to rely upon in order to save him.

It meant, even though he was locked away somewhere, he still existed - even if toying, mad gods drew horrifying shapes that only he could see, that only he could understand; he was still somewhere in there, banging away at the bars, screaming for salvation. And Mion and Rena both could hear him. It was this that pushed her own fear aside, that allowed her to step forward into his home, that allowed her to continue to smile in his presence. Because she knew that were the situation reversed, he would do all he could to save her. And that was the promise they had never uttered, never _needed_ to speak of.

In every world, and in every dream, they had always been friends. And they would be again.

Mion toyed with the marker in her hands. She pulled its cap off and then put it back on, repeating the action several times in uncertainty. Then she took a deep breath, placed the marker in her bag, forced a smile onto her face, and knocked on the door.

x x x x x

Mion shot awake with a raw gasp that felt as if her throat was trying to swallow a river of stones. Spiders of static light loomed in the darkened room, a television projecting soft noise and snowy silver. The whole of her body was sheathed in frigid sweat, phantom hands freezing her pale skin. Her eyes met with the television, a portal into nothing. A fairy tale for ghost children.

She had died.

There was no possibility that it had been a mere nightmare. In those, she shambled about, led through her mind in random and sporadic bursts, images and feelings pulled from her past and guided by the will of her eyes spinning frantic in their sockets. But this had been _reality_; unbreakable, linear, cohesive. There was no disconnection. She'd sat below Keiichi, looking up at him in disbelief as he kicked her to the floor, his hands reaching in a frenzy for the clunky metal of the baseball bat, and then. . .

Mion's teeth bit down on her lip hard. And then she'd lived an eternity in a second's time.

Her hands pushed roughly into the tatami mat she lay against, bringing her into a loose sitting position against the wall. She didn't even remember falling asleep. Had she been watching TV? No. But she lay halfway atop her futon in her clothes. It made no sense. Try as she might, her thoughts scouring outward to the past, she couldn't recall how she came to that place. The nightmare of the everlasting now. Her room seemed so large, then - the walls impossibly tall, the ceiling thousands of years across the dark, the universe around her nothing more than herself and the static distance between the flickering television.

And Keiichi had killed her.

_(the blades of loss inexhaustibly swung)_

Mion's hands flew to her eyes as if she could somehow physically pull the image from her mind, hot tears spilling onto her fingers, lost in space. She remembered her feet on his stairs. Being allowed into his house for the first time. The cautious smile she gave Rena, the scent of his room as they pulled back the door, of the terror razing through his eyes as she uncapped the marker and smiled at him, and. . . and. . .

_**Panic.**_

She almost screamed. It felt as if the world had suddenly dropped out from under her, a baptismal plunge in nil recurrence, a cold fire laughing at her in disequilibrium. She felt herself slump over onto the floor. Her hands shot out, fingernails digging into the soft beige foam, clawing desperately at any kind of hold. Her face touched onto the futon, moisture transferring, her teeth clenching her pillow in an enamel vice. A terrified, frustrated rasp of panic escaped her then, muffled, breath laboring in a smothering heave. He'd killed her. There was no mistake. She was dead, both of them, and she'd _**failed**_ him.

It was ridiculous, but how could she not believe it? She remembered and felt every facet of it. Its existence roiled like waves more real than the room she sat in.

But she was -

_How could I have done such a thing? I killed Mion and Rena. . ._

- alive.

"Kei-chan. . ."

The voice was weak, urged forward from wasted lungs, but it re-birthed another memory. One every bit as accurate and vivid as the nightmare she'd escaped. How he collapsed at her feet, shaking with some invisible terror, pleading for her to understand how sorry he was that he'd done such a thing. Was that what this was? Had she stepped into the world that he had seen? Or was this merely what lay in wait afterward, some fractal and disjointed universe that was built from memories of lives unlived and deaths undone?

She found the strength to push herself onto her knees. Mion shuffled over to the desk where her phone sat, her eyes beginning to adjust to the dark room. She hoped beyond what could be conveyed that he was about to laugh at her, he was about to scream in fury at her, he was about to demean and ridicule her over how _stupid _she was. She didn't realize she was shaking until her fingers fell onto the receiver. The dial-tone swept into her ears with a storm, loud and consuming. Her fingers shakily punched at his numbers.

It could have been thousands of rings. She couldn't count. The line clicked. There was a slow, stumbling noise, and then,

"Nghff. . ."

Mion managed to reign her panic in enough to form words, barely. "Um, hi, um. . . I'm sorry for calling at this hour, but could I please speak to Keiichi?"

". . . Mion?"

"Kei-chan?"

He yawned. "I think so. . . what time is it?"

Massive, pulverizing hands lifted away from her asphyxiating soul, life and blood and time slamming into her as she confirmed that it was him. "It's. . . so good to hear your voice. I know that probably sounds really really silly, but- I um- I don't know."

She could hear him roll over, the cord thwacking against the cradle. ". . . God, Mion. It's. . . it's like two-million o'clock. What's going on?"

Mion didn't bother to pretend to be anything other than honest. "I'm kinda. . . kinda panicking. A little bit, I'm- I'm in a weird space right now, and-"

"Okay," he said, his voice still creaking with the age of sleep. "What's wrong?"

"I'm freaking out."

"Yeah. Why?"

Mion looked over at the TV, trying to somehow manifest sense into her nonsensical anxiety. If this was _anything_ like what he'd felt then, when he'd fallen before them. . . "It's hard to explain, but. . . it's like- like I hadn't enough to support myself if I was wrong- if you weren't there, I. . ."

Keiichi coughed. "Are you on crack or something?"

"No! No. I just. . . oh God help me, this is going to make me sound so stupidly childish and lame, but - but I had this horrible dream."

His voice became annoyed. "So you're calling me in the middle of the night because you're a sixteen year old girl who had a nightmare."

Mion almost smiled. This was exactly what she'd wanted. "See? See, it's stupid. It's stupid, isn't it?"

Keiichi sighed. ". . . Well, yeah. Pretty stupid."

"But now I understand, right? Understand what you meant that day."

She could hear him rustling about, obviously sitting up in his futon. "Mion, what's really going on here? What are you talking about?"

Mion let out a slow breath, trying to negate the memory as she related it. "You know how you thought that you killed me, and you kind of lost yourself? Well that's just happened to me. Only it was you that- and I couldn't save- _we_ couldn't save you in time, and. . ."

"Wait, so you had the same vision?"

"It was a dream."

"Whatever," he sighed, as she heard him grow increasingly lucid. "You had the same dream? Seriously?"

Mion breathed out in a desperate heave. "Well I don't _know_ if it was the same, okay? All I know is what I saw."

"Okay, okay. Calm down. We can talk about it."

"I. . . I _can't _calm down, Kei-chan! I've never felt so- so trapped, and cornered, and powerless like this before, and. . . I thought that we weren't friends anymore, and. . . and I can't even pretend to think like that, because it's so painful and scary, but. . ." Her stuttering momentum was ground to a halt as something she'd overlooked passed over her thoughts. Again the shape of the unknown hammered at her heart, her stomach twisting in paranoia. "Rena! Is Rena okay?"

"What?"

Mion's hand gripped the receiver, white knuckles lining its surface like a string of fire-polished beads. "Is she okay. Do you know?"

Keiichi shifted around on his end of the phone. Mion could hear his sheets billow. "Uh, last I checked. It was just a dream we had, right? I mean, we saw her earlier today at school. I didn't-"

Rena. The vision had ended before Mion knew what had become of her, but she did not need to ruminate long as to what her fate would have been. But she would have to take Keiichi at his word while she lived in this world. It felt as if she'd only recently awoken, and not merely physically; eyes had pried apart to see this world for its first moments only minutes ago, lungs only full of their first pained gasp of breath as she'd propelled herself up from the ground. So all she really had was the need for Keiichi to be Keiichi at that time - to doubt him now would be to sever the stem that allowed her growth.

It was foolish. But she couldn't help herself. He could have lied to her, could have boxed himself in from his own actions, but Mion could accept that - that she would stop believing in him would be an inconsolable path, and it was one she knew without pause that she _would_ fall into. As sure as the sins of her bloodline, as the day and then the shade. She preferred the risk because it countered the certainty.

"I know you didn't," she eventually said, her voice quiet. "I'm sorry. I knew it. It had to be a lie. I knew you wouldn't do that. I knew you were the Kei-chan that belonged with us, that loved us, and that we loved. . ."

"Mion. . ."

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice. I had to know. . . _had_ to, that you were still in the same world as me, that we. . . that. . ."

". . . Are you crying?"

Mion's hand reached up gently to her face, pulling away, and her fingers shone warmly before her. "Well, of course I am. I'm crazy, remember?"

"Has this ever happened before?"

"Not like- well, sort of. . . but not like this." She swallowed heavily, her ears hurting. She looked across the room at her TV as it spat soundless noise through the room. "Stupid nightmares when I was a kid or something, you know?"

"I'm sorry," he consoled, his voice genuine.

"You didn't do anything. To either of us. You wouldn't. I know you didn't."

Keiichi sighed. "I'm still sorry. I'd give anything to undo that vision, even if that's _all_ it is."

"I know. And. . . I'm. . . lost, right now. To be honest. I've never really. . ." Even after hearing his voice she was still at the limit of human togetherness. It felt as if the world itself was spinning wildly, everything unknown merging together into whirling razors that would take her soft body into streamers of red ruin with their touch. She never really thought of herself as someone that could have a panic attack, but here, caught inside one, she couldn't help but find it hilarious in a completely bitter and self-reproachful way. "I don't know."

Keiichi was silent for a long moment before asking quietly, ". . . Did you want me to come over?"

Mion blinked, never having considered that. "It's two-million o'clock. I, um. . . No, don't. This is all so silly. I shouldn't have called you at such a ridiculous hour about my silly dreams."

"All true, but still. Did you? I will if you want."

She covered her eyes with her free hand, tears streaming down her face in a traced dream. But she was smiling. "I'm sorry. . . yeah. Could you? If you don't. . . I, uh, I don't know. . ."

"It's okay," he told her, and she could hear him standing and picking up the phone. "Don't be sorry. I'll leave right now, okay?"

"I'm sorry for being weird. I just. . . something happened, I guess, and. . . I don't know how to explain, I just. . ."

"Okay. I'm getting changed right now. See you in a few, okay?"

Mion looked over at her window. "Thanks. Thanks so much. I'm really sorry about this."

"Yeah, yeah. Stop apologizing. It's really okay. I'm gonna climb down the downspout once I get some pants on, so I'll be right there."

He hung up, and she was alone again. The television and the dark and the delusions and the dead worlds and the best friend climbing out his window in the middle of the night to come and cheer her up.

This was not that Keiichi. This was _her _Keiichi. This was the boy that Rena had so accurately summed up, the raving lunatic that raged against the apparatus of harm and imprisonment to free those he loved, the psychopath that brought a golf club to a baseball game to beat the hell out of the other team because Satoko had so gloriously fooled his simple mind, the idiot that ate twelve steaming takiyoki balls inside five seconds and probably burned his tongue to a fossilized muscle because he thought that they would all find it pretty amusing. And of course they did. They loved him every bit as much as he loved them.

But she was still afraid. It was such a big world, and there were so many things that could have gone wrong that she didn't even know about. All the dust at her feet and the history being passed into her hands. Trains clacking along their rails somewhere in the night.

Mion swallowed. She stood, her legs wobbling, and made her way over to the window. Her fingers wrapped around the blindfold, pulling the shudders up, and then she reached out and unlocked the frame. She pushed the window open, the cool night wind brushing in against her tears. Moonlight tinted everything in the valley before her in the same chrome shade. Somewhere in those trees he was making his way up to her.

She could scarcely believe he was actually coming over. But then that was just silly, because she knew in her heart of hearts that he would do anything she asked of him. They were exactly alike in that regard. For better or worse, they were a team, fated to always be fighting behind the same lines.

Even though, she was beginning to suspect, there were far greater things beyond the mirror than her own reflection. That she had inherited more than physical objects.

In the murderous dusk of her dreams, of her past selves and wanting regrets, her days were lived in prophetic withdrawal; she could see and be affected, even identify and predict, but she could never change. The doors of her Grandmother's home, the secret rivers and sunlit grass of Hinamizawa, the quiet murmur of the trees and the invisible cage that held all within along the rings of the hills. A kingdom of liars built by the deceived. But there was more. People that she had known that never returned, things dwelled in whispers never given actual voice, eyes cast away from her gaze when they touched upon her in fear.

Of love and companionship, freedom and adventure, lineage that was not poisoned by horrors and devils. Threads of nullified worlds that were tangled about her fingers, only viewable in hallucinations and imaginings. Guided by a superior will unseen, each 'chance' was merely an escape into a new slavery. Few were loyal. Most were afraid.

But these, all of these, were born from the circumstances of all things external, and of them and their effects, Mion had ceased to cry at a very young age; somehow aware of what little it accomplished, at what great cost to her lungs.

_Give me your hands, and know that you can rest. I have strength to carry you._

"O, therefore from thy sightless range  
With gods in unconjectured bliss,  
O, from the distance of the abyss  
Of tenfold-complicated change,

Descend, and touch, and enter: hear  
The wish too strong for words to name;  
That in this blindness of the frame  
My Ghost may feel that thine is near."


End file.
